Bared Blade (4 page)

Somewhere behind me, Stel screamed.

S
hade
invisibility has its strengths and weaknesses. Biggest strength? In the dark you are essentially invisible. Biggest weakness? The blind spot. In a brightly lit space—like the Gryphon’s taproom had just become—the Shade’s dark shroud registers as a sort of large moving hole in your vision. A lacuna, or void.

Most people will barely register it if it goes away quickly enough or, if they do take notice, they will dismiss it as a symptom of too much drink or incipient headache. But for people who have been trained to look for Shades and their companion Blades, people like the Elite captain I was trying to kill, it’s a clear sign that one of my kind is close at hand. In this case, too close.

The captain was good and he was fast, flicking a bundled coil of deep purple magic loose of his wrist and lashing out with it in the very instant he noticed me. But I was already inside his guard. I drove my knife up and in, under his ribs and into his heart, twisting as I pulled the blade free. Hot blood followed it, contrasting sharply with the cold ice that
wrapped my spine when the captain’s already dissipating spell lashed across my back.

Triss shrieked in pain and the lower half of my body effectively went away, as I lost all feeling below the waist and collapsed. I caught a boot in the ribs—someone tripping over me while bolting toward the momentarily unguarded door. I rolled away, hoping to get clear before they had time to think about what had just happened. That’s when I noticed that I’d lost my shadow, or rather that it had returned to being no more than a dark outline on the floor.

I didn’t know what the spell had done to Triss, only that he was still alive or I wouldn’t be. As much as his absence scared me, I didn’t have time to do anything about it if I wanted us both to survive the next few minutes. I was half-paralyzed, exposed and vulnerable and that was after taking only the dying aftereffects of the Elite’s spell. What would the full treatment have done? I shuddered and pushed the thought aside. I needed to get under cover. I started dragging myself toward the closest refuge—the dark space under a nearby table—sweating ice water all the way.

Up close, the filthy straw on the floor was more noisome and foul than ever, lousy with centipedes and nipperkins. Not that this was the first time I’d ended up crawling around on the Gryphon’s floor, just the first time I’d ever done it sober. I’d just about made it under the table, when the feeling started coming back in my lower body. I had to clench my jaws to keep from swearing aloud, because I didn’t think I’d be able to quit if I got started. It felt like ten thousand tiny imps had decided to use me for target practice with their tiny bows, every one of them shooting fire-tipped arrows. If you’ve ever been jabbed with hot needles, you know the sensation. Yes, I have. No, I don’t want to talk about it.

But with the pain came the ability to move, and as much as I just wanted to lie there until the hurting stopped, I had things to do, starting with checking on my familiar.

“Triss!” I hissed, forcing myself to hands and knees. “Are you all right?”

My shadow shifted beneath me until it looked as though it belonged to a small dragon—Triss’s preferred form. The dragon nodded his head briefly, though he didn’t speak, then collapsed back into my own outline a moment later. That really worried me—he’s normally much more circumspect, and this was a case where words would have spoken more quietly—but he
had
nodded and I still couldn’t afford to stop moving.

I had to find out what had happened to Vala and Stel, help them if they were among the living, and make my escape if they weren’t. Grabbing the edge of a table, I pulled myself upright and scanned the room. Compared to the chaos of a few minutes before, the Gryphon seemed positively peaceful. Three dead Elite and two stone dogs lay on the filthy floor along with a dozen other mixed casualties. The Crown was going to be profoundly unhappy—it took years to make an Elite and their numbers were few.

Stel was down and out, though presumably not dead, judging by the light of healing magic Vala was applying to her fallen companion. Most everyone else on both sides of the conflict had fled. As I staggered toward the women I noticed an unspilled drink sitting at the edge of a table—a short glass filled with something clear and no doubt brutally alcoholic. Rice-white or one of its cousins.

I thought about it, I really did. I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse that I picked it up and lifted it to my lips, and at that moment I really didn’t care. The effort of getting to my feet had left me shaking and sweating. I
needed
that drink.

It was harsh and warm, the cheapest stuff imaginable, and it went down like a shot of liquid silk—sleek and soft and oh-so-soothing. Not as effective as a hot cup of efik, or even a few of the fresh roasted beans that wonder brew came from, but I’d turned my back on the Blade’s drug of choice long ago. Almost against my will, I thought about all the bottles sitting behind the bar, even half turned that way. But I knew what following the impulse would make me, and I forced myself to head for the women instead.

Vala was sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing away
from me, with Stel’s head cradled in her lap. She was doing some sort of intricate spellwork, healing magic well beyond my meager training in that direction. The details of the spell were far less interesting than the fact that she was doing it without a familiar anywhere in sight. I’d been watching her and her companion rather closely all night, and I’d never seen even the hint of a familiar. Nor did I now. The obvious answer to that puzzle was that she’d partnered an air spirit like a qamasiin, or some other invisible creature, but I was beginning to suspect a very different solution.

I took another silent step closer just as Stel’s eyes flickered open, meeting mine. Though Stel didn’t move her lips or even twitch, I saw Vala go suddenly still, and I froze. She couldn’t know I was there, and yet, she did. Moving carefully and deliberately, I opened my hands and extended them out to the sides, palms toward the two women to show that they were empty. If I was right, I was on very dangerous ground. If I was wrong, the worst that would happen is that I’d make myself look the fool.

“I’m not your enemy,” I said quietly. “There’s no need to start up the bloodletting again.”

Though she kept looking in the other direction, Vala half turned toward me, lifting her right arm away from her body. Revealed in the gap between elbow and ribs was the tip of one of her battle wands. She was pointing it squarely at my chest with her hidden hand. Stel’s eyes never left mine.

“Can you give me a good reason not to use this?” asked Vala, still looking away. Her voice sounded tight and clipped.

“I killed that third Elite, the captain. If I hadn’t, your pairmate would be dead now, and so would you …Dyad.”

Vala nodded. “So you know what I am.”

“I do.” Though I hadn’t been sure until that moment.

“All the more reason to kill you.” This time the voice came from Stel’s lips.

But it was the same entity speaking, the Dyad. Two bodies, two brains, one creature. A single being with three distinct minds and personalities. Stel, Vala, the motes, and their
Meld, the master entity formed from their conjoined souls—together, a Dyad, and about as far away from the familiar partnership Triss and I had as you could get. On a personal level the thought of Dyads had always struck me as a little creepy, and I found myself wondering how I could have compared one of them to Jax. On the other hand, there were the fallen Elite to consider. I couldn’t argue with their deadliness, and right at the moment, with Triss incommunicado, I almost envied their ability to read each other’s thoughts.

“Aren’t you going to bolt, or at least try to convince me not to kill you?” the Vala half of the Dyad asked after the silence had stretched out between us.

“No,” I replied. “I don’t need to. If you were going to make the attempt out of hand you’d already have attacked. Since you haven’t …” I bowed my head lightly, indicating it was still her move.

The Dyad made a little growling noise in the back of both her throats, but nodded the Vala head. “Stel took a solid hit from one of the stone dogs. It broke a half dozen ribs and she’s barely up to walking. Under the circumstances, I’d rather not start a fight with anyone who can kill an Elite. Not if I don’t have to. You’re still talking to me instead of running for the hills. That suggests that it was skill rather than luck that did in the Elite. Also, that you’re interested in some sort of alliance. What’s your proposal?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” I only wished I knew what the answer was—this was Triss’s gambit, not mine, and he wasn’t talking. “But it’s one I think would better be discussed somewhere else, don’t you? Somewhere safer.”

It was mainly a play for time, but that didn’t make it any less true. The Crown Guards had very sensibly scattered when their Elite officers fell, but they were good soldiers and would be back with reinforcements as soon as possible. I made a quick mental calculation of the round trip time from the Stumbles to the customs house at the docks, the nearest place likely to have an Elite or two on hand—over half an hour but not by much. If they wanted to come in force, we might get an hour and a half—the time it’d take
those Elite to send a message to the palace and summon more troops—but no more than that.

“Did you have a place in mind?” asked Vala. “Is it close? I don’t think Stel’s up to a long trip.” There was something different about the tone of the second question and its follow-up, something more normally human, and I suspected it came from Vala rather than her Meld.

“I’ll do whatever I have to,” Stel spoke firmly, but I could tell she was having trouble breathing.

“I’ve a fallback not far from here,” I said. Several actually, which made the thought of exposing any one of them less worrisome. After the events of the previous spring had reignited my interest in life, I’d started to rebuild old habits of caution and contingency planning. “We should be safe there, for a while at least.”

“Take me there,” said Vala, speaking in the clipped tones of the Meld.

Before I could move to offer Stel a hand, the Dyad flowed to its feet. Using the two bodies in perfect cooperation, it made the difficult task of getting the injured woman upright look like a carefully choreographed bit of dance. I realized then what it was about the women’s behavior earlier in the evening that had made it so hard to ignore them: the inhuman coordination.

Any time the two had interacted directly, handing a wine glass across the table say, they’d done so with none of the wasted movements or minor corrections that normal people made under similar circumstances. That told me that they’d never learned to pass for standard-issue human. And, that in turn, meant this pair was almost certainly operating beyond the range of their normal duties and training.

I hadn’t had much direct interaction with the Dyads; none of the Blades had within my memory. Kodamia was a much better and more humanely run enterprise than any of the surrounding countries, which meant it mostly avoided the attention of my goddess. I
had
encountered a few of them over the years, mostly while working undercover in various of the courts of the east; Kadesh, the Kvanas, Zhan.…

The Dyads I’d seen under those circumstances—mostly spies, eavesmen in diplomatic drag—had appeared perfectly normal except when they deliberately chose to emphasize their alien nature. Vala and Stel had pretty clearly not gone to whatever spy school those others had. An interesting detail that. So was their comparative youth—not much more than twenty-five, either of them—which was a good decade younger than the other Dyads I’d met. I wondered what it meant, finding them so far from home.

“Come on,” I said, nodding toward the back door. “We’re less likely to be seen going out this way and I’ve a brief stop I need to make on the way.”

“For what?” Vala asked suspiciously.

“My gear. I rent a room over the stable …or I did up till today.” I started walking. Either they would trust me and follow along or not. Whichever happened, I needed to grab my stuff and get out of there before the guard returned in force. “The whole place is burned now. After this I’m not going to be able to come back here for quite a while, if ever. Not with three dead Elite and reports of a rogue Dyad heating the neighborhood up. Too many people saw me with you.”

I’d been too busy staying alive and in one piece to think ahead, so that hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment, but it was true and it actually hurt me a little to realize it now. The Gryphon’s Head was the worst sort of dive and it lay in the heart of one of Tien’s most miserable slums. None of which changed the fact that it had been my home for more than six years—longer than any place other than the temple of Namara itself. I was going to miss it.

I glanced around sadly as I ducked out the back door. In the earlier panicked stampede for the exits someone had knocked over one of the cheap oil lamps that normally lit the yard. It had landed in a filthy pile of used straw from the stable, and now the flames provided a bright if fitful light that made my shadow dance wildly on the wall behind me. I spared a surreptitious glance at the spectacle, hoping to see some visual evidence that Triss was back with me. I
didn’t get that, but I did get a brief reassuring squeeze on my shoulder, and it sure wasn’t from Vala or Stel.