City of Light & Shadow (39 page)

  He stepped forward as if to brush past Kat, but she moved quickly across and continued to block his way. "Maybe you're right, maybe they don't have the stomach for that sort of thing, but then I'm not the authorities, am I."

  "Get out of my way, Kat."

  She did step back then, hands straying towards her sword hilts. "That's never going to happen."

  "You don't really want to fight me," he said. "I was more than a match for your sister, remember, and they tell me that of the two of you, she was comfortably the best."

  Kat's smile was thin-lipped and cold. "Thank you so much for mentioning my sister, not that I needed any reminding." She drew her blades, moving with deliberate slowness so that the sound of them sliding from their scabbards spread through the night like a protracted sigh.

  With a resigned look, Brent drew his own, longer sword. "You'll forgive me if I make this brief, only I have a boat to catch."

  Kat smiled. "As brief as you like. I wasn't planning on hanging around long myself."

  His blade flickered out, like the silvered tongue of a serpent. She blocked it with ease but this had only been a feint. The very instant steel struck steel his sword turned to attack from another angle, only to be met by Kat's other blade. As those clashed, Kat struck with her free sword, but found only air as Brent danced out of the way. He stepped back, seeking to create some room and thereby give his longer reach the advantage. Kat followed, determined not to let him.

  Kat knew what to expect – she'd seen him fight Chavver, after all – but watching someone and actually facing them were entirely different things. During these initial exchanges Kat took his measure, as he doubtless did hers. He was strong, fast, confident and well-balanced, never overextending. His footwork was as proficient as his swordplay, the co-ordination of hand, eyes and feet apparently faultless. In short, this wasn't going to be easy.

  Good. His death would be all the more satisfying, then.

  Kat moved onto the attack, launching a rapid series of strikes, first one sword then the other, in a familiar pattern that had overpowered more than one opponent in the past. Not this one, though. He moved and swayed and blocked and parried with a nonchalance she couldn't help but admire. She felt certain that Brent was fighting within himself, and put enough effort into her own swordplay to hope that he wouldn't suspect the same of her.

  Their swords locked, leaving them glaring at each other over the crossed blades. Kat's second sword had been stopped in mid-strike, her wrist gripped in Brent's free hand. It became a wrestling match between a wiry man and a teenage girl, each attempting to overpower the other.

  He might have been bigger than her but Kat was stronger than she looked; not as strong as Chavver, perhaps, but strong enough to surprise him, she hoped. For long seconds they struggled, Kat straining to hold him, feeling that her arm was about to pop from its socket and knowing that she couldn't keep this up for much longer.

  Then he did something she'd never seen before; a twist that looked impossible and must surely have dislocated his wrist. Suddenly their blades unlocked and his longer sword flicked out towards her. Taken by surprise, her own effort nearly carried her forward onto the tip of his blade; but speed of reaction saved her, enabling her to twist out of the way. Instead of being impaled, she felt steel rake across her front, slicing through her tunic to cut a bloodied gash in her skin, running in an oblique line from somewhere between her neck and chest to her left shoulder.

  She jumped back, both swords raised.

  "First blood to me," Bryant said, eyes gleaming.

  
Brecking obviously, so why waste the breath to crow about it?

  He was quick, he was clever, he was skilful and he was confident. No wonder Brent had given Chavver such a hard time. But Kat was all of those things too, and she was only just getting started.

  Spurred on by the piquant sting of her wound she moved to the attack again, feet dancing, twin blades weaving intricate, synchronised patterns as she probed for an opening. Brent matched her move for move, his single blade seeming almost alive as it blocked a thrust here, parried a cut there, and arced round to deny her again. Kat was impressed. Not many would have been able to live with her at this speed. So she started to work harder, steadily winding up the pace of the attack while sacrificing none of her skill or aggression.

  Through the shifting veil of steel formed by their blades Kat saw Brent's eyes widen. She'd surprised him, unsettled him. He'd thought that he had her measure, that she'd shown him all she had. More fool him. She ramped things up still further and finally breached his guard, her hand twisting past his blade, her own sword inflicting a shallow cut to his forearm; at the same time her other blade struck, slashing into his other arm, cutting deep enough to damage the triceps muscle – Kat knew about wounds, knew about damage inflicted and taken. She heard his sharp intake of breath as he stepped quickly back, disengaging.

  She let him, giving him the time to doubt, perhaps enough to take the edge off his reactions. She wanted that arrogance to fracture, to let a little fear seep in, along with the realisation of how severely he'd underestimated her.

  "Much better; now we've both been bloodied," she said.
Now who's pointing out the frissing obvious?
But she couldn't resist, and upped the ante of their verbal sparring by promising, "For every cut you land on me, I'll pay you back double."

  Before he could reply she attacked again, not holding back anymore, wanting to keep him off-balance and determined to finish this quickly. He was quick, but not this quick. The attack sent him stumbling backwards, his defence becoming more ragged, more desperate. She sensed the end was near. He knew that too, she could see it in his eyes.

  Again one blade slipped through, even as the other was parried, cutting Brent in the side before he could dance out of reach. She grinned and pressed forward, her twin blades a blur.

  He was weakening fast. Whether this was due to his recent time in jail or the wounds, Kat couldn't say. Perhaps he would have been tougher before his imprisonment; she couldn't have cared less. Life didn't deal in might-havebeens. Hers didn't, at any rate. A thrust with the left hand, a twist with the right. She felt one sword scrape his ribs while the other sent his own weapon flying from his hand and clattering to the ground.

  Brent stumbled back a pace, sweating, panting for breath. "Enough," he gasped, holding up a defensive hand. "I yield. You've bettered me and I'm at your mercy." Perhaps he saw it in her eyes. For the first time, she saw a hint of fear in his. "You wouldn't kill an unarmed man, surely."

  "Really; you think? Not the man who distracted my sister long enough for the Soul Thief to sneak up and kill her; I wouldn't kill him, you reckon?"

  "Look, I had to," he burbled. "My orders were to keep the Soul Thief alive… she was a Demon, you see…"

  "You
knew
she was a Demon? Breck, why am I always the last one to know anything?" Kat took a menacing step closer. "Who are you working for?"

  "I don't suppose it matters now. The Misted Isles… the Demons contacted us offering…"

  As he spoke, his hand came up again as if to ward her off.

  No! Too late she caught the glint of something is his palm as it shot forward to punch into her upper arm. The pain was excruciating. She cried out. At the same time, she reacted. Instantly, instinctively. He tried to grasp her good arm but she was too quick, his fingers slipping away from their attempted hold as she struck at him, her sword lashing out once, twice and a third time, doing damage at every turn.

  For a split second Brent stood before her, blood pumping from the slit in his throat, hand reaching, struggling futilely to stem the flow. He might have tried to speak, to tell her something, but any final words emerged as nothing more than incoherent gurgles.

  "Sorry, I lied," Kat said. "For every cut you make, I'll pay you back
more
than double."

  Brent collapsed to the ground, though Kat was no longer paying him any attention. "Shit… Shit…
Shit!
" She examined her wound, which was bad, she'd realised that straight away. There was a lot of blood – it must have severed something important. The "it" in question was a homemade blade, not a proper knife at all but the shard of something pilfered and sharpened. She could testify to exactly how sharp the result was. The offending article was currently embedded in her arm, just above the elbow. The sensible thing to do was leave it there, she knew that. Removal would only risk further injury. But as well as hurting like mad this crude makeshift blade offended her, and she wanted it out of her body as soon as possible. Common sense be hanged. Wrapping a cloth around her good hand to give her better purchase, she grasped the shard, took a second to brace herself and then pulled, yanking it out in one firm swift movement. Another scream escaped from between her clenched teeth and yet more blood welled forth, but she ignored the pain, knowing she had to work swiftly.

  She wrapped the same cloth around her arm just above the wound, using her teeth and her good hand to pull it as tight as possible, forming a tourniquet. Not perfect, perhaps, but it was the best she could do.

  She straightened up, sheathed both her swords and – turning her back on Brent's corpse, dismissing the bastard from her thoughts – walked away, cradling her injured arm. She headed towards Iron Grove Square –
Charveve Court
, she corrected herself – and the Tattooed Men; she headed towards Shayna. Had she been fit and healthy, the distance would have been nothing, but in her current condition this was going to be a challenge, no denying it. She couldn't afford to stop, couldn't afford to rest. This was the City Below; if she fell down the chances were she'd never get up again but would instead become just one more corpse for the spill dragons to pick over and the body boys to collect come morning.

  But that wasn't going to happen, not to her. She was Kat, leader of the Tattooed Men, last of the Death Queens, and she was going to make it. She
had
to make it.

 

 

  He loved it here in the Upper Heights, the roof of the world. It was morning and Tom had arrived early, to stand by the city's outer walls and gaze out across the mountains. He had travelled a long way of late – in more senses than one – and he'd seen any number of wonders, things which the street-nick he'd been a mere month ago could never have conceived of; but nothing he'd encountered could compare to this. Thaiburley's crown, the very place he'd been trying to reach on that day which now seemed a lifetime ago, when he'd scaled the city's walls and witnessed what appeared to be a murder.

  He still recalled the first time he'd been brought up here by the Prime Master – the
old
Prime Master. Then the sight had taken his breath away, and it still did.

  The wind today was stronger than on that first visit and the air colder, though not enough to cause him to regret choosing this as the venue for the meeting. It seemed fitting.

  He turned to consider the city's roof. A panorama of decorative spires, artful crenulations, slender towers and elegant chimneys opened up before him, stretching away as far as the eye could see. According to the Prime Master, one man had conceived all this, someone called Carley. For a while Tom had wondered if this might be Thaiss's brother, but it wasn't, he knew that now.

  A number of things had tumbled into place in the aftermath of his renewing the core, almost as if some part of his mind had deliberately held back a welter of information gleaned from the goddess, knowing that he needed to concentrate on the job at hand and only releasing this final flood once the work was done. Perhaps it wasn't his mind, perhaps this delayed knowledge had always been the goddess's intent. So many things that had puzzled him or that would have puzzled him once he'd found the time to think about them now made sense. Not everything, unfortunately.

  The Jeradine, for example. He knew that they were an ancient race whose civilisation had once spanned the stars, now reduced to a dwindling population content to live out their days in the shadow of others. Why had they settled for such placid obscurity? Their ambitions and their motivations were completely alien to Tom, beyond his ability to understand. The more he discovered about them the more he became intrigued by his own ignorance on the subject. He determined to learn all he could about these enigmatic neighbours, hopefully with Ty-gen's help, but he couldn't do that from up in the Heights.

  His attention returned to the inspirational vista before him, slipping back to that first time he'd been brought here. Seeing the city's roof had fulfilled a lifelong dream, though there had been one disturbing element; he'd found the Upper Heights haunted by elusive will-o'-the-wisp figures intent on teasing him. The Demons.

  They were gone now, of course, and the new generation had yet to establish itself, but if anything the place felt more haunted now than it ever had then. Tom kept expecting to glance around and find the familiar face of his mentor beside him, to hear that gentle voice offering him insights and wise words. Instead, he had just the wind for company.

  That was set to change, though, as Tom spied the Prime Master's successor striding towards him. The man's brown hair was being blown into ragged wisps by the wind, as if mussed by some gigantic invisible hand.