He wasn’t a total fool, however. The second guard ducked my erratic swing at his neck and got the sword between us as a shield of sorts. I slammed into his chest, tried to hug him as if we were lovers, and slipped my knife up under the back of his ring-mailed jerkin to find one of his kidneys.
I hoped.
The blade went in easily, but the bastard was tougher than I gave him credit for. He didn’t drop screaming. Instead, he hugged me back with his free hand, putting pressure on my dislocated shoulder. I nearly blacked out from the pain, and my knees gave way. Only my opponent’s grip kept me standing.
Lampet’s stiletto appeared before my eyes, the tip waving in a tiny circle between my face and the chest of the panting guard. At least he was in agony, too. While focusing on the weapon in front of me, I stirred my short knife inside the guard’s body.
“Sir…,” he grunted, then released me as we both collapsed. I found myself on the floor with my legs trapped beneath two hundred pounds of armored thug.
And I had lost my remaining short knife.
I concentrated on not losing consciousness as well.
The councilor stood over me now, still gripping his weapon. He looked excited—face flushed, panting, that narrow blade trembling in his hands. “You need some more scars, Mistress Green,” he whispered. “I shall give you many before we are done with each other.”
My free hand, the one not immobilized by the agonizing fire in my shoulder, slapped at the floor around me. The other short knife was here somewhere, the first one I’d dropped.
Lampet leaned down and slid the tip of the stiletto inside one of my nostrils. Oh, by the gods, I had done just this to his man. He flicked the blade up in a spray of blood and shot of exquisite agony.
My hand found something rigid. My blade? I tugged at it.
The damned sword. I did not have the leverage to lift the weapon. So I dragged it toward me, careless of the scrape upon the floor.
Lampet studied the blood on his knife. “You bleed just like everyone else.” His thin smile was terrifying. “I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but people in this city say you’re a demon from the fiery hells of the south.”
“Not all of them,” I gasped. Keep him talking, keep myself awake and aware, pull that stupid, heavy, useless sword a little closer.
“All the ones that count.”
“Do you even know any women?” I asked, then was promptly horrified at my own words. Why was I twitting this man who was working at killing me slowly? He might decide to kill me quickly.
And where are the rest of his guards? Lampet had an entire regiment at his disposal, at least in theory.
“Does it matter? You won’t see them anymore.”
He leaned close again, focusing on me. My mind raced. Was this man crazy? Cruel? Obsessed?
Not that it mattered. What he was, was standing over me with a weapon.
I noticed my grip on the sword was firm. That was good.
What was I planning to do with it? I’d had a purpose when I first grabbed it.
Something pained my nose again. A shape swam above me. Big. Threatening. Holding power over me. All I had was one arm and one sword and one chance.
He began to lean over a third time, and I shoved the overlong blade into his mouth before he came too close for me to use it.
What sort of idiot brings a sword to a knife fight, anyway?
* * *
I awoke, choking and sputtering. Blood filled my mouth. After a moment of panic, I realized it was not my blood. That created another moment of panic.
Amazingly, my head cleared, probably due to the agonizing pain from my left shoulder.
How long?
Seconds, seconds. Lampet lay next to me, heels drumming against the floor. His cheek was torn wide open. Blood poured out of his open mouth as if it were a wellspring of the stuff. A sword—no, the sword—was on the floor between us.
Time to get moving. Oh, by all the gods, I hurt.
I rolled sideways as far as I could, forcing my shoulder back where it belonged. That sensation caused my vision to fade into darkness, but I clung to consciousness. After a few deep, ragged breaths, I felt a bit more in possession of myself.
With the sword, I levered and cut my way out from under the fallen guard.
By the time I was on my feet, I looked as if I’d been through a slaughterhouse from the wrong end forward. I found one of my short knives, though bending to pick it up was a brutal experience. I slashed all three throats before me, just to make sure. I didn’t want anyone jumping up and surprising me before I could recover a bit more.
None of them bled much, so I’d probably done it right the first time.
To get out of here was another project. I’d killed my best hostage, but, well, he was still here. I dropped to my knees and sawed awhile at Lampet’s neck with the borrowed sword. This kind of work was the ruin of a good blade, no better than using it for cooking. After a while it occurred to me to use my short knife, which had kept such a wonderful edge just lately. I quickly had a piece of Lampet the size of a decent pork roast, and the oily bastard hadn’t had a damned thing to say to me while I was doing it.
“Sorry about the hair,” I whispered into one of his cold ears.
The liquor cabinet beckoned me. I did not so much want a drink as I wanted to make a fire. The office would be so much more cheerful with a bit of warming. I propped Lampet up on top of a wine bottle, using the slender neck to support his head from within his own ragged throat.
“Thank you for stocking so much of the distilled drinks,” I told him. “Unlike wine, some of that will burn.”
He stared back at me, but still didn’t have much to say.
Opening the blessed things one-handed was difficult but not impossible. Glass breaks, after all. I went through them as best I could, sniffing to see how high the proof was if I didn’t recognize the contents by scent or the shape of the bottle.
What would burn, I poured out on Lampet’s desk. Why the man didn’t have the decency to keep drapes I could set alight, I did not know. No books, either. What kind of mind kept an office with no books in it?
Eventually I had a decent puddle dripping across the finished cherrywood and down into the drawers. “Stay here,” I told Lampet, then staggered to the fireplace, where there were lucifer matches among the tools.
That set a nice pale flame going on the desk. It was the best I could do just then.
“Are you being ready to go?” I realized I was speaking Seliu, which Lampet didn’t understand. So I apologized in Petraean. “I’m sorry, I don’t meant to be rude.”
With my good hand, I managed to wedge his hair into the fingers of my bad hand. His dead weight at the end of my arm was a screaming horror, but I very much needed to carry a weapon that I could have some hope of using. Threatening people with a dead councilor didn’t seem very helpful.
“And we are off.” Short knife in my grip, it was difficult to open the door, but I didn’t want to put anything down for fear I would not be able to pick it up once more. The office was already filling with smoke, so I turned around and went to the glass wall of the solarium instead. Fewer guards that way, too.
I smashed the butt of my short knife into one of the big windows. The glass starred, then shattered outward. Some halfway decent kicks cleared the framing until the hole was big enough for me to step through. I looked down at a small garden about a rod below me.
“You think I can make the drop?” I asked the councilor.
A surprised yard boy looked up at me. So I jumped down upon him.
Lampet’s servants deserved no mercy, either.
* * *
A few blocks away, I turned to see a column of smoke rising behind me. It wasn’t much, and they’d surely have the flames out soon, but I promised myself that if I had time before I sailed to Kalimpura, I’d go back and do a proper job of burning out the Red House and everyone in it. Even the accursed maids. And especially Cook.
For now, all I could do w
as keep walking. It did amaze me how many people found business elsewhere at my approach. I kept up a running chatter with Lampet, whose conversation seemed much improved over my previous experiences of him.
Under the old Duke, a bloody woman carrying a severed head would probably have been stopped in the street. These days, well, the world wasn’t quite the same.
Which was fine with me.
By the time I reached the Textile Bourse on Lyme Street, I was singing both halves of a duet with Lampet and being followed by a crowd of small boys. No one was guarding the entrance there anymore, and they still hadn’t fixed the place up properly from the last time I’d damaged it.
Well, the last two times.
I banged through the front door, shouting about the sorry state of affairs in Copper Downs, and swung Lampet around to give him a good look at the mob of clerks and their assistants who had all glanced up at my entrance. They did not make me feel welcome.
“Nast,” I said, dredging names up from a memory that had grown unaccountably fuzzy. “Or Jeschonek. Now.”
Somehow my short knife was still in my good hand. I wondered where my other one had gotten to—I was sure to miss it soon. More than two dozen pairs of eyes watched the tip waver as I pointed toward the black and white marble stairs. My friend smelled funny, I realized, though it was far too soon for him to have begun to rot in earnest.
“In chambers, Lady Green,” someone finally said in a choked voice.
“Brilliant.” I lurched into motion, slipped briefly on some blood that had pooled on the floor. “And get someone to clean this place up. You people are pigs.”
* * *
They were no happier to see me upstairs, but someone must have rung a bell or suchlike, because the upper hall with its senior clerks and Important People was mostly cleared when I reached the top landing. Mr. Nast, chief clerk of the Interim Council and a dreadfully thin man with a mind as narrow as a ruler and sharp as one of my knives, stood at the far end before the door decorated with stained glass images illustrating the wonders of felt.
“You have never placed your faith in appointments.” His voice was freighted with disapproval as I staggered down the hall toward him.
Lampet was becoming heavy, but he was my passport into the meeting I planned to have next. “I brought my own councilor,” I said brightly.
“So you did. Councilor Jeschonek and Councilor Staggs are meeting now over the disposition of the gate tax.” He took a long glance at my little friend dangling in my hand, then: “I don’t suppose you’d be prepared to wait.”
By now I was nose to nose with the man. Nast was one of the few people in Copper Downs for whom I had any true respect, but at the moment he was just being ridiculous. “Do I look like I am prepared to wait?” I pulled my short knife away from his face with a muttered apology. “Besides, this city doesn’t even have gates.”
Nast sighed theatrically, opened the door, and announced me. “The Lady Green, to see Councilor Jeschonek.”
“I thought—” Rising from his chair with a look of irritation on his face, Jeschonek interrupted himself on seeing me. He was as big and blond as ever, still looking the part of a man who’d worked the docks all his life before entering the rougher trade of politics.
Lampet’s head landed on the table with a meaty thump. “I have once more resolved the governance of this city in your favor,” I said. “Councilor Lampet was uncooperative.” Carefully I tucked my short knife way, with a curious glace at Councilor Staggs, who’d risen to his feet along with Jeschonek. I’d never heard of him before. He had a mixed complexion and almond eyes, as if his grandmother had been Hanchu, and he was dressed like any prosperous merchant of this city might be—dark woolen pants, bloused pale silk shirt with a maroon-edged ruffle, and a cutaway clawhammer coat in a similar maroon. Somewhere nearby would be a tall furred hat; I was just certain of it.
“You look like a steward,” I told him.
Staggs opened his mouth to reply, but Jeschonek urgently waved him to silence. Then: “You may have done us a great service here, Green.” He eyed Lampet, who stared back blankly. “Though as usual, I must wonder at the cost.”
“Oh, the Red House is not finished paying.” My vision was beginning to cloud, darkness creeping in, and my left arm had transitioned from flaring pain to an alarming dullness. “I owe them another visit before I depart this city.”
“I would take it as a great favor if you would refrain from setting fire to or otherwise destroying any more of our city’s historic buildings.”
Offhand, I couldn’t recall the last time I’d destroyed a historic building, but I took his point. Oddly, my thinking was becoming more clear even as the pain and horror of the past hour were overtaking my consciousness.
“Now I must make my leave,” I said shortly. “With luck, I shall never return to Copper Downs.” Simply remaining standing seemed to be an increasingly great trial.
“Let us all hope for luck.” Jeschonek stepped close, braced my arm, then to both our surprise, I am certain, drew me into a tight hug. “You are the bravest, strangest woman I ever knew,” he whispered in my ear. “Now leave these shores before someone finally succeeds in killing you.”
“You’re lucky I already put my knife away,” I whispered back as he released me.
I received the first genuine smile I’d seen on Jeschonek in the time since the whole Federo mess had started. He took my words for what I’d intended, and I realized there was another man here I respected as much as Mr. Nast.
Nodding at Councilor Staggs, I stumbled back into the hall. I left Councilor Lampet with his fellows. Though I would miss my little talks with the bastard. At the last, he had become a great listener. Much better than he had been in life, I was certain of it.
Nast had two decently sized young fellows set to prop me up. “Chives and Innerny will escort you where you need to go, Lady Green.” He showed me a thick folder tied with twine. “Your repatriation bonds, and papers for passage aboard the kettle ship Prince Enero. She sails tomorrow for Lost Port and then Kalimpura.”
“How did you know to book me passage?” I asked through a deepening sense of haze.
“I have booked you passage on every departing ship these past four months. Please believe me that it has been very much worth the effort. Good-bye, young lady. I wish you well.”
From him, I believed that.
We stumbled down the stars, my decently sized young fellows and I. “Bustle Street,” I murmured. They seemed to take my meaning.
The lower floor clapped for me as I left. I was glad to note a boy with a mop cleaning the mess by the door.
* * *
When we reached the Bustle Street Lazaret, I was reciting ancient doggerel from the Portfolio Indicus. Summoning the last of my otherwise-vanished strength, I banged on the well-used armored door, shouting, “Drinks for me and my men, by the nether hells, or I’ll have the place down around your ears.”
I was standing only by virtue of Chives and Cream, or whatever their names were.
In retrospect, I might have chosen a calmer approach. Still, the small, barred viewing port opened and a crossbow pointed out, to be replaced almost immediately by a concerned face. “Green?”
“None other, and her brothers,” I announced.
Cream, or maybe Chives, leaned close. “With the Interim Council’s compliments, ma’am, and we’re very much hoping you can take care of her. She’s been hurt bad, and has gone out of her head.”
The door swung open and I was snatched within. “You’re all over blood,” a voice exclaimed. “Is it hers?” another voice asked anxiously. Someone shouted for hot water and a filled bath.
I cried for strong drink until they gave it to me. In the bath my breasts leaked milk and I cried for my babies until someone fetched them, along with Ponce and a small knot of acolytes. Nursing my children, I cried for sleep until they left me alone in crisp sheets with my pains and my family.
Lastly, I cried for Lampet, thou
gh I could not even now say why, all these years later.
* * *
I awoke some hours later. My body was a giant bruise. Federo and Marya slept, blessedly. There was something that badly needed doing, but I had lost track of it. So I fell asleep again, instead.
Morning brought Euphronia, the scarred fat woman who minded the door and kept the business affairs of the lazaret. With her she had Ilona carrying a bowl of gruel, along with a plate featuring a slice of rough, dark bread and an old horse apple. Not that the babies wanted that, but she’d procured goat’s milk as well for them, in a sugar tit.
Sitting up hurt like fire. My nose itched abominably. Still, I was so pleased to see Ilona. My heart skipped a bit, and I could not wait for her to offer me the food so I could breathe in her scent.
I allowed her to place a spoon in my mouth over and over. It would be a while before my left arm worked properly, and my right was busy holding Marya. Besides, it felt good to have her tending me closely.
“We stitched your nostrils last night,” Ilona told me.
“They hurt,” I complained. I was embarrassed at the petulance in my voice.
Euphronia gave me a strange look. “A lot more than that should hurt, judging by your bruises. And you had enough blood on you to make corpses of several others.”
“Only one or two,” I said, feeling sullen. No one ever believed in what I did. “Or maybe three,” I added in a burst of honesty. Then, to make up for it: “I fell while visiting a friend.”
Ilona snorted. “And the fire at the Red House was a coincidence.”
Memory flashed into being in a flood of embarrassed triumph. She knew me too well, and besides, we’d shared the same hardheaded education in political and social realities back at the Factor’s house. “Those bastards arranged the attack on you at the Temple of Endurance.”
“Ah,” she said. “What did you do about it, precisely?”
“I had an edgy conversation with Councilor Lampet of the Reformed Council.” I giggled. “I suspect they do not have a quorum anymore. And I turned Lampet over to the Interim Council.”
What had happened to my promise to stay out of the politics of the city?