Page 10
A genuine belly laugh escaped the man. “You want me to pay fourteen ounces of gold for two old peasant women? Fourteen for two hags?”
“No, I don’t want you to pay. And it’s seven. That’s three and a half—”
“Well, we have two problems, then.” Isik rubbed his hands together. “First, it weren’t my order. Second, I’m not telling you shit. Actually, three problems, because we still have the question of what to do with you.”
“You’re their master.” Rue held her knife up. “Try me.” She beckoned him forward. “Show the children how it’s done.”
“A duel, is it?” Isik’s brows rose in mock surprise. “Turning ten to one into one to one just by asking for it?”
To avoid further speaking, Rue raised her left hand, spread her fingers to show five, then folded two away. Five and three remaining. Eight to one now.
Isik glanced to where Tabtha sat huffing through the hurt as others bound her leg. “Eight to one. I’ll give you that.” He met her gaze. “Does that work for you often? Just asking for a duel?”
“Hasn’t worked lately,” Rue managed, dribbling blood and sucking in a painful breath. “But then I hadn’t cut anyone for ten years until just now.” She leaned her back against the shack’s wall. “Thinking…your pride…all your crew…take the challenge.” She twisted her stolen knife back and forth as if in playful invitation.
Rue could see that Isik wasn’t stupid. But most of his band probably were, and he would lose face in their stupid eyes if he did the clever thing. Also, cunning or not, every man has his own pride. Common sense said to get a spear and finish her off…but a man’s pride can always lead him into foolishness, even if you’re telling him that’s exactly what’s happening. Pride’s a strange thing. Long ago an alchemist had shown Rue that there are several parts to a lungful of air. One the alchemist had named oxygen—the invisible but vital stuff that fires the blood and gives flames the strength to burn. Too little of it and you die, but too much and you also die. Pride was like that too.
“My knife…” Rue slurred. “Against yours.”
Isik considered for a moment, running his gaze the length of her body. He shrugged and drew his knife. He held it like a man who knew what he was doing. Who had taken lives with a short blade in tavern fights, dark alleys, and battlefields.
The mercenaries moved closer. She had their full attention now. Even Tabtha was glaring at her while applying pressure to her wrist. Rue would have mocked them, but her jaw hurt too much for wasted words. She hoped that Soosa would have the sense to slip out but couldn’t risk a glance in the child’s direction.
With a grunt of pain, she shrugged herself away from the wall. She had been overplaying her weakness to draw the man in, but not by much. She held her knife in a loose, bloody grip and beckoned Isik forward with the fingers of the other hand.
Isik exchanged an amused glance with the brothers flanking him. Now that he’d committed to the role, he had to play it to the full. His humour didn’t stray past his cheeks, though: his eyes held neither colour nor joy. They were the eyes of a man ready to do business.
He came forward, feinting as any knifeman will, looking to prompt a response, make the foe twitch, gauge their speed. Rue kept still. Even the blood stopped dripping from her mouth. She gave him nothing.
Isik’s hand flickered out and in its wake a hot line traced itself across Rue’s cheek. He’d been so fast. He pricked her shoulder. A cat playing with its food. Making a show. Even so, he remained wary. The man wasn’t stupid. He’d glimpsed her true self, enough of it at least to be waiting for a deadly reply if he gave her the chance.
The mercenary stabbed at Rue again and she stepped into the blade’s path. That surprised him. Isik had enough experience to catch her knife hand as it descended in an amateur overhead blow. Anyone angry enough and lacking skill will go for the mutual destruction option, getting stabbed but stabbing back. Any fighter worth their salt will know to stop that.
Isik’s blade slid easily between her ribs. It didn’t even hurt. She felt the punch of his hand behind the hilt more than the deep kiss of the knife. It hurt when she twisted, but the fresh surprise on his face was reward enough, at least in the moment. He tried to pull his steel clear, but her rib cage trapped it.
In the same moment, not as fast as Isik could have done it, but fast enough to do the job, Rue dropped her stolen knife from fingers now all but nerveless in the ferocity of the man’s bone-grinding grip…caught it with her other hand as it fell and stabbed him in the neck.
Isik let her go then, and she fell back against the wall once more, blood filling her left lung as she grinned at her audience’s amazement.
“Who’s next?”
They came at her together, still ignoring the common sense of the spear, crowding each other in their fury. Rue didn’t imagine they were heartbroken over Isik. It was more that her defiance infuriated them—her refusal to comply with their expectations.
She managed to sink her blade into one of the attackers before she went down beneath a flurry of blows. The hardpacked earth received her and a rain of stamping feet kept her there. Rage isn’t cruel—cruelty is a colder thing. All thoughts of torture had been washed away by the raw animal need to make an end of her.
Rue had hoped her last thoughts would be about something she loved, misplaced friends, the three daughters she’d lost, perhaps even the two Kindnesses who had once been her sisters. Instead, her mind emptied of everything, including pain, and she saw only a black sun in a bone sky, and heard nothing save the whispering rush of a river.
7
Bek
Year One
Although the women who served breakfast in the Academy’s great hall were variously maimed, they all shared two mutilations. All nine had an ugly circular brand on their foreheads, and someone had taken their noses, leaving a wound that left Bek with little appetite for the porridge dumped into the bowl before her.
“Acolytes who nearly made it.” Einsa bent to the task of scooping oatmeal into her face at a rate that made it seem she must have been raised by wolves.
“I thought they all died,” Mollandra whispered on the girl’s right.
