Ninavis must have seen the look on my face. She stepped up next to me. “Are you lot this stupid? You know our kind can’t own swords by law. You walk into any shop in the city and they’ll know you stole it.”
“That’s why it’s ransom, not theft. I’ll melt the damn thing down before I—” The man tilted his head and raised an eyebrow in Ninavis’s direction. “Wait a minute. ‘Our kind,’ you say? What clan are you, woman?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, I say it does.”
She gave the men a critical eye. “What are you lot? Leumites?” She scoffed. “Be off. You don’t want the trouble I bring with me, let alone her. She’ll make you scream for your old god-queen.” Ninavis removed her apron and began twisting it.
I didn’t think it was a nervous gesture.
“Look at her face.” A bandit pointed to Ninavis’s wine-stain birthmark. “She’s Diraxon, I bet.”
I kept my face blank. Diraxon. Leumites. These names meant nothing to me. Were they Marakori regions? The way I hailed from Tolamer, a canton of Stavira?
The bandits seemed more familiar with Ninavis’s clan name. The crossbows wavered. One man went so far as to clutch crossbow and bolt to his chest. “Diraxon, but…” He took a step back.
Their leader proved more immune to intimidation. “I could call myself the high general of Quur and it would mean as much. Now strip off your valuables and drop ’em on the ground.”
“What happened to just taking the sword?” I asked as I unsheathed my weapon and held it with the blade pointed downward.
“That was before I found out your bitch is Diraxon.” He pointed at Ninavis with a combination of chin and elbow, still holding the crossbow aimed at me. “Count yourself lucky I’m not slitting her throat. Most good folk would consider it their duty to kill any Diraxon they met, after they caused the Hellmarch.”
After they …
My muscles tensed. I looked over at Ninavis for an explanation, but she paid no attention to me. She didn’t deny his accusation, but only because she wasn’t listening.
Ninavis was preparing for a fight.
“Don’t do this,” I said, not quite sure if I spoke to the man or to Ninavis. I lowered my arm, still holding the sword. It wouldn’t do much against crossbows, but at least I had freed it from its sheath.
“You know what? Never mind. I changed my mind,” he said. He raised a hand to give an order I was sure I would neither like nor enjoy.
“Don’t do this,” I said again, but he paid no attention either. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
No one gave me the slightest mind; all their focus was locked on Ninavis.
“I’m a count! Harm me or mine and the duke will never stop hunting you.”
The bandit sneered. “The duke can go freeze.”
“Brother Qown, hide.”
“Count, please—”
“To Hell with you,” the bandit leader spat. He pulled the trigger.
I twisted to the side. The bolt’s feathers whistled as it passed, ripping through my tunic and cloak, and tearing open a gash on my left arm. It sailed on to slam against an apartment’s dirty white marble wall.
Pain made me hiss.
“Damn it,” Ninavis cursed. She swung the rolled-up apron at one man’s crossbow while she lashed out with multiple swift kicks to another bandit’s head. He collapsed.
Others remained, however, each a heartbeat from loosing a barrage at us. They all thought Ninavis the greater threat.
I needed to change their opinion.
I ran at the bandit crew’s leader. He had time to consider his mistakes in life before my fist, wrapped around my family sword’s pommel, smashed through his skull. A shocking spray of blood splattered against a wall, but I paid little mind. Instead, I grabbed the corpse by its tunic and held it up as a shield—to block two bolts otherwise headed for Ninavis. I threw the corpse at another bandit to distract him while I sliced him open from groin to gullet. Someone called my name in warning.
I turned and for a moment …
Ah, but for a moment.
I didn’t recognize Ninavis. I didn’t see her as a friend. She stared at me with wide eyes. She must have realized I stood a hairsbreadth from turning my sword on her.
The same bandits trying to kill her saved her life.
A crossbow bolt hit me in the back.
I felt the pain as a hot wash of flame across my spine. I screamed in rage and twisted around, ignoring Ninavis to concentrate on my attacker.
I didn’t bother with the sword.
I tore out his windpipe with my nails, tossing it to the ground as I moved to impale another bandit through the stomach, ripping up and out until he spilled his intestines in a great steaming pile on the ground. A fecal stench, sharper than the road’s sewage, joined the aroma of spilled blood and wet metal.
I don’t know what happened to Ninavis or Brother Qown. I didn’t see them, for which I will be forever grateful. The two remaining men backed away with their empty hands raised. I think they begged, but I had no ears for human tongues.
I killed them too.
It’s just as well for everyone I don’t go into details.1
I don’t think I stood there for long before I returned to my senses. At some point, I realized I stood in the middle of a half dozen Marakori corpses, no more recognizable as humans than slaughtered livestock. Blood covered me, some of which was my own.
And I didn’t know if Ninavis or Brother Qown were alive or dead.
“Nina? Qown?”
I heard whispering to the side. Brother Qown stood up from behind a broken, overturned cart despite Ninavis’s best efforts to pull him back. He scanned the scene, horrified. I wouldn’t have begrudged him for throwing up, but sometimes I forget he doesn’t faint at the sight of blood.
I wanted to say something, but my vision began darkening.
“On second thought, I’m also kind of glad you didn’t prove you could use that sword when you and I first met,” Ninavis said. Her joke fell flat as she stared at me. “Janel? Janel!”
The world slid out from under my feet, and I plummeted into an abyss.
21: A DIFFICULT HEALING
Jorat Dominion, Quuros Empire. Three days since Kihrin D’Mon, Hamarratus, and Star left the Capital in search of a Gatestone
Kihrin frowned.
“I told you that wasn’t my favorite part,” Janel said.
“No, I just had the oddest mental image of watching you kill a demon using someone else’s severed arm.” Kihrin studied her. “But you didn’t describe that. Also, remind me to stay far away from you in a fight.”
“I hardly ever lose control anymore.”
Kihrin shook his head. “Now see, it’s that ‘hardly ever’ part I find so disconcerting.”
“Welcome to the party,” Ninavis said. “At least the beer’s free.”
Janel cleared her throat and looked away for a second. “Your memory of the arm happened. In the Afterlife when we last met.”
“Huh.” Kihrin wasn’t sure how he felt about the idea he was remembering the Afterlife or, by implication, his past life. Unsettling.