Steel's Edge (21 page)

These weren't the freshly acquired, to be sold as slaves. No, they were the rejects, probably used for manual labor on the island, little more than beasts of burden. No human being should have been treated this way, but they had been, and now they were finally venting their rage. They would kill anyone in their path.

Straight ahead, a raised platform with seven sets of metal posts stood, each post widening at the top. The slaves' shackles would be fixed to the post, under that wide top, so they could be evaluated. To the right, another gate gaped open, and another group squared off for its control. Nine armed slavers in leather on one side and four of Jason's people on the other. Neither was willing to make the first move. Jason's people were good and looked desperate, but the slavers outnumbered them two to one.

He had to get through that gate.

Richard grabbed Charlotte's hand and squeezed it. “We'll have to cut our way through. Stay behind me.”

He strode toward the fight. A slave spun into his way. Richard knocked him aside and thrust himself between the two lines, holding his sword lightly at an angle.

The slavers surveyed him, spreading out. He heard Jason's people move back.

Here, poised on the threshold between violence and peace, was his true place. Generations of warriors, stretching back through time to the fierce native clans that had first fled into the Mire to escape a magic catastrophe, had stood just like him, balanced on that sword's blade between life and death. Here he was in control, serene and at peace.

In that brief moment, when their lives and his came together, he truly lived. But for him to experience life, his opponents had to die.

The first slaver moved to his right. Richard struck, piercing and cutting with a surgeon's precision and speed honed by countless hours of practice. He spun in a fluid movement and stopped, his sword held at a downward angle.

The slavers looked at him.

The second, fourth, fifth, and seventh of them fell. They made no noise; they simply crumpled to the ground.

The remaining slavers froze for an agonizing second and rushed him. He melted into the moment, striking without thought, completely on instinct.
Gash across the chest, reverse, throat cut, abdomen cut, stab under the rib cage to the right, free the blade cutting across a chest in the same move, reverse, cut across the throat, thrust forward . . . and it's over.

Too soon. It was always over too soon.

The last slaver stopped short of his sword. The thrust never connected. The man lingered upright for the space of a breath and sank to his knees, struggling for air. Behind him, Charlotte's magic coiled back into her body.

She stood very still, her eyes opened wide, looking at him as if they had met for the first time.
This is it,
he wanted to tell her.
This is who I am.

He couldn't tell if she was surprised or horrified or perhaps both or neither. Regret stabbed at him, but then it was better that she knew his true nature. They had to move. He took her hand, and they ran to the gate.

“Thank you,” he told her. “That was brave of you, but also unnecessary. Please don't do that again. I don't want to accidentally injure you.”

She pulled her hand out of his fingers. “I'm not helpless, Richard.”

Did she find his touch repulsive? He sliced through the lock securing the gate. “I know you're anything but. But you've done your part, and it's my turn. Save your reserves. We may need them.”

They went through the gate, and Charlotte gasped. Above them a corpse hung from a pole. A boy, Jack's age. His eyes had been gouged out. His mouth was sewn shut. His nose was a broken mess of flesh and cartilage on a face scoured with burn marks. A sign hanging around his neck read, “We're always watching.”

He had seen this before—the slavers' favorite visual aid to discourage escape. He had pried Jason out of a hole in the ground just before he was about to end up on such a pole. Anger, hot and furious, burned in him, then died down to a simmer.

“He was alive,” Charlotte whispered.

“What?”

“He was alive when they mutilated him. Those are predeath wounds.”

Darkness whipped out of her. The hair on the back of his neck rose.

Charlotte clenched her fists. “I'm going to kill every slaver we find.”

He noticed the set of her jaw and the thin line of her lips. Her eyes burned. He recognized this fury. It and he were old friends, and he knew it was useless to get in its way. “As you wish,” he told her. “All I ask is that we move up the hill toward the bookkeeper.”

Ahead, the streets unrolled before them, climbing up a low hill. They marched upward together.

*   *   *

THE
house sat recessed from the street, a stately, respectable, two-story mansion, flanked by carved columns and palm trees. A brown horse was tied to the side, flicking its ears and casting nervous glances at the street.

Richard glanced back behind them. No movement. They had left a trail of dead bodies, and half of them belonged to Charlotte. She killed again and again, driven by an overwhelming need to stop the slaver savagery from happening. He was like that too, at the start of this mess. Back then, every new mutilation and atrocity infuriated him. He had seen things so wrong and shocking, that the only reaction he could manage was to destroy those who committed them. It had become his moral imperative and the only possible human response.

He saw it now in Charlotte. She was trying to cleanse the city. He wasn't a mind reader, but he knew exactly what went through her head. If only she could manage to kill every slaver in their way, the pain would stop. If she didn't kill, she would have to process the full horror of what she had seen in the past five days, and it would rip her to pieces.

It had taken him several months before he realized that killing slavers accomplished nothing. They were the immediate tormentors, but no matter how many he cut down, as long as somewhere, someone wealthy was getting wealthier from that torment, new slavers would always take the place of the old. Charlotte would come to realize this too, but for now she needed to act, and act she did. He had known that many plagues existed, but seeing them in all their terrifying glory was an educational experience.

She was walking oddly now, as if her feet hurt when she rested her weight on them. Her lips were pressed together into a thin, hard line. Her skin was pale, her eyes very bright. She looked feverish. She must be expending too much magic. There were only two ways from here: she would stop exerting herself and recover, or she would drain herself and die.

“We're almost done,” he told her. “No more, Charlotte. Save yourself.”

Charlotte nodded.

He cut into the door, carving the lock out of it with precise strikes, and pushed the heavy wooden halves open, revealing a large hall with a staircase curving to the second floor.

His mind barely registered the three crossbowmen crouched behind an overturned chest of drawers. He saw the crossbow bolts coming at him and automatically flashed, throwing his magic in a pale shield in front of him. The bolts bounced off. He dashed forward.

“Die,” Charlotte ordered, her voice exhausted.

The three crossbowmen choked. He jumped over the chest and cut them down with three strikes.

Behind him, Charlotte slumped over and leaned against the column. Damn it all.

*   *   *

SHE
was spent. The last spark of magic burned dimly within her. If Charlotte let it go, her hold on life would slip. She was almost tempted to do it.

How had it snuck up on her so quickly? She had expended a lot of magic, but she never felt tired. She felt light and all-powerful, as if her body had become a burden, and she was disconnected from it. And then, in the last five minutes, as she climbed the steep street to the house, reality crashed back into her. Her body felt so heavy, so constraining, as if every pound of her flesh and bone had become three. Her feet ached. She wanted to vomit just to lighten the load.

The moment her magic flowed out to strike at the bowmen, her legs failed. Too much of herself had gone out with the magic. She had to lean against the column, or she would fall.

Richard loomed over her. She glimpsed anger in his eyes.

“No more.” His clipped voice held an unmistakable command.

She felt the magic of his body, a vibrant life force shivering just inches from her. All she had to do was reach for it. Her magic whimpered, eager for sustenance. That's how plaguebringers were born—the exertion drove the healer to seek an alternate source of fuel and siphon off the nearest life to keep on killing.

He dipped his head to meet her eyes. “Charlotte!”

She wasn't ready to give up on life yet. “Do not raise your voice at me, my lord. I know where my limits are, and I have no intention of fainting or dying. I won't use my magic anymore. You're on your own.”

A lean, dark-haired man walked out from behind the staircase. He carried a sword.

*   *   *

THE
man held a Sud sword, a long, slender length of steel. Young, fit, walking with perfect balance, and carrying his sword with complete confidence. An adept, probably a professional fighter.

Richard flicked the blood off his blade.

They looked at each other.

The sword master attacked. Richard parried and lunged. The blade met a wall of blue flash and slid off. Magic burned his arm. The Sud used the flash to reinforce his blade. Fantastic. And here he thought this would be easy.

Richard ignored the pain and spun, delivering a short barrage of strikes. The Sud parried, dancing and spinning. They moved across the floor. Richard attacked. Strike, strike, strike. His blade bounced from the Sud's sword. Normally, his flash-sharpened blade would've severed his opponent's weapon.

The man was good, Richard gave him that.

Richard backed away. He walked the path of the lightning blade, relying on that first, faster-than-sight strike to instantly incapacitate his opponent. Failing that, he fought with precision, banking on his power and control. The rapid melee of parrying and trading blows while covering a lot of ground was his weakness, while the Sudanese swordsmen reveled in it.

The Sud attacked in a flurry of blows. Richard parried, lunging, thrusting, looking for an opening and finding none. The Sud coated his entire sword in a protective magic sheath, making it nearly impossible to break and using it as a shield. It was down to skill and speed, and the Sud had plenty of both.

The man feinted to the right. Richard pulled away, avoiding the trap. As he dodged, the man hopped forward, turning the feint into a spin, and kicked. Richard saw it, but he had no way to avoid it. He spun into it, flexing, taking the hit on his left shoulder. The kick hammered into the muscle, and Richard staggered back. Like being hit with a club.

The Sudanese swordsman landed and spun on one foot, showing off. “My technique is superior.”

Vanity. The Sud was young, hungry, and eager to prove that he was better.
Thank you for showing me the chip in your armor.

“Keep hopping around,” Richard said. “Your dance teacher isn't here to clap for you, but I'm enjoying the show.”

Most men would've begun to tire by now. He doubted this one would. The Sud seemed to take putting spring into one's step literally. His sword was unbreakable, his technique flawless. But the man himself was flawed.

A hint of movement tugged at Richard. He turned his head slightly. Charlotte pushed away from the column. He had to keep her from doing anything rash. Charlotte was a proud woman. If she had any strength at all, she would've remained upright, so she must've been at the end of her rope. If she thought he was desperate, she'd try to save him. Letting her die for his sake wasn't in the plan.

He shrugged, nonchalant. “My lady, I'll be with you in a moment. I just need to pull the wings off that pretty butterfly.”

The Sud clenched his teeth, making his jaw muscles bulge. It wouldn't take too much more to nudge him in the right direction.

“Don't mind me,” Charlotte said.

“First I'll kill him, then you,” the Sud promised.

“I don't think so.” Charlotte sat on the overturned chest. “He's better.”

“I'm better and faster,” the Sud said.

She shook her head, her voice matter-of-fact. “Not only is he better, but you fight for money. He has more at stake.”

No panic, no tremor in her voice. Just a calm statement. She hit the Sud right where it hurt, and she did it as if the outcome of the fight were already a foregone conclusion. Damn, but that was impressive.

Charlotte had no doubt he would win. Richard shifted the grip on his sword. He couldn't disappoint.

He motioned to the Sud with the fingers of his left hand. “Come on, let's have the finale. I can't waste any more time on your prancing. The lady is waiting, and I don't want to be rude.”

The Sud leaped, unleashing a flurry of strokes, too fast to keep up. Richard parried the first, the second, the third, and counterattacked, holding his sword with both hands, sinking all of his strength into the overhead blow.

The Sud flashed, shielding his blade, but the sheer power of the impact staggered him.

Richard struck again, bringing a barrage of blows onto the Sud's sword, forcing him back with every strike. Sweat broke out on Richard's forehead. This attack was draining all of his reserves, but he was betting on the Sud's ego. If he was lucky, the younger man would rise to the challenge. A wiser swordsman would simply wait Richard out and, once he tired, kill him at his leisure, but youth and wisdom didn't always travel together.

The Sud lunged forward, grinding his blade against Richard's, flash against flash. They struggled, locked. The Sud twisted, trying to catch Richard's leading leg with his foot, aiming to trip him. Richard shoved him back. The younger man stumbled, off-balance. Richard hammered a front kick to his chest.