No Quarter (24 page)

*Another joke?*

*Mostly. Now shut up, I need to concentrate.*

Drawn back into himself as much as possible, Gyhard felt her attention shift to the cliff face. Her thoughts cleared until they focused on nothing but moving down and across, fingers and toes. The world became rock.

The rock under her right foot crumbled. Her left foot, already in the air, could find no purchase.

She dangled, her entire weight on fingertips alone.

Then the toes of her left foot found a crack; the side of her right foot, a crevasse.

Breathing heavily, she rested her forehead against the wet stone, unable to tell if the roaring she heard was her blood in her ears or the sea, waiting hungrily below.

A few moments later, still some distance from the slide, she felt a shiver deep in the rock.
If
it goes now, we'll go with it
. Her thought. Gyhard's. It wasn't important.

Knees and elbows were bleeding when she finally reached the house. The area was remarkably contained, loose debris having already fallen into the water. She was reaching for one of the two waiting ropes when the world shifted.

One chance. Everything risked on it. Lips pulled back in a vicious parody of a grin, Vree launched herself off crumbling holds at the wildly swaying rope. Rock careened off the cliff around her. Wood shrieked as timber framing twisted like taffy. She closed her fingers. The rough hemp cut into her palm. Something slammed into her shoulder. She snarled and hung on. The noise pounded at her.

Flung back and forth on the end of the rope like a rag doll, she fought to get her other arm up. To double her chance of survival.

Then it was over.

Her first thought was for Bannon. The sight of the second rope, hanging empty, nearly accomplished what the rock fall had been unable to do. Then she remembered and her heart started beating again.

Miraculously, the house had not yet gone all the way over.

Climbing back up to the lower edge of the slide as quickly as she could, Vree tied the ends of both ropes around her waist and then dropped back down even with the canted wall now the bottom of the building.

"I need more line," she yelled. "Play it out slowly. Keep the .."

*Tension,* Gyhard offered.

"… tension the same!"

Cries from the clifftop seemed to indicate they'd thought she'd fallen.

"Talk it over later!" she screamed. "Just give me some slaughtering rope!"

She'd yelled in Imperial, Gyhard noted. It didn't seem to matter. Her tone appeared to be enough for results.

Muttering under her breath, she moved sideways toward the smashed remains of a window that appeared to open out of a floor. When she reached it, she was astounded to see a young woman her own age peering out. "Celja?"

Celja smiled and brushed at the line of blood dribbling into her eyes. "Hello. Do I know you?"

*Shock?*

*Good guess.* "Celja, can you move toward me?"

"Sure. My legs are free now. They weren't before, you know." She crept forward on her elbows, looked down, and added. "I don't think I could swim right now.

Maybe I'd better stay here."

"Come a little farther," Vree told her, ducking as a splintered chunk of wood dropped past her ear. "Just a little."

"I don't think so."

"Dumi's waiting for you up top," she said, untying the second rope.

Her face brightening, Celja pulled herself another few feet closer to rescue. "Do you know Dumi?"

"Not very well." Her toes gripping the rock, Vree leaned out, slid the free end of the rope under the young woman's arms and tied it off.

"You're not from around here, are you?"

"No." Easing back, she began to slide Celja out of the window.

The world shifted again.

One hand gripping the front of Celja's tunic, Vree flung them both away from the slide, hoping the arc of the rope would be long enough.

It was.

Just.

Celja was unconscious but alive when they pulled her up.

Half a dozen hands reached for Vree as she came over the rim, most of her weight on the rope. Someone untied the knots, someone else threw a rough wool blanket over her shoulders. The scene had taken on a clarity she recognized and her blood sizzled the way it did after a target had been taken out. All that was missing was Bannon. And a body.

The villagers were shouting things, but she didn't understand most of them.

Everything seemed to be happening some distance away from herself.

Then she saw Magda kneel by Celja's side. The healer looked up, caught her gaze, and nodded.

*It's funny,* she murmured.

*What is?*

*If I hadn't been so thoroughly trained to kill people, that girl would have died.*

Her need overwhelming caution, Gyhard extended his awareness and pulled the blanket more tightly around her, leaving his/her arms wrapped around her/ his body.

She shivered.

*You're cold.*

*No…*

"One double pallet or two singles, my lord?" Scowling, Gerek pushed wet hair back off his face. "What?"

The innkeeper sighed. The Circle enclose her away from nobility determined to rough it. "One double pallet," she repeated, "or two singles? The double'll cost you half an anchor; the singles, a gull each. You two sleeping alone or together?"

"Alone," Gerek told her indignantly, reaching for his purse.

"Very well, my lord. There's stew in the pot if you and your .." She took a good look at Bannon, reassessed both her first and second opinion and decided she didn't want to know. "… companion want a late supper. Quarter-gull each, bowl of stew, bread, and beer. Bowl of fruit's another quarter-gull."

"Fine." Gerek laid a half-gull beside the two copper coins already on the scarred counter. Until he'd spent the last few days in the saddle pounding at a full gallop down the South Coast Road, he'd thought he was in good shape, but every time they'd changed horses he'd mounted a little more slowly. The short walk from the stable to the inn—an establishment chosen purely on the basis of proximity—had nearly crippled him. All he wanted was to sit for a few minutes on something that wasn't moving, shove some food into his abused body, then fall over. That Bannon appeared to be completely unaffected by the punishing ride irritated him more than he could say, and he strongly suspected that had it not been raining so hard, the southerner would have expected them to reach the next station before stopping for the night.

The public room was nearly empty. Although the three trestle tables could probably hold close to thirty people if they were willing to be friendly, this evening there were only six other customers. Two old men sat by the empty hearth pushing tricolored game pieces around a strategy board, and four young women sitting in the seats closest to the door giggled over mugs of beer.

Shoving his saddlebags under the table with the side of his foot, Gerek began to drop onto the end of the bench nearest the counter.

Bannon lightly touched his arm. "No," he said. "You sit on the other side of the table."

Gerek felt his lip curl—about the only protest he had the energy for. "Why?"

"Because this the only seat in the room where you can see all four entrances."

"Four?"

"Door to the outside; door to the kitchen; stairs to the second floor, chimney."

"Chimney? That's not an entrance!"

"It is when there's no fire lit."

Grinding his teeth, Gerek shuffled around the table. "Fine," he snarled. "Sit there. And I wouldn't be surprised if someone came down the chimney and tried to kill you."

Bannon bowed mockingly. "
Tried
to kill me, Your Grace. This way, I can protect
your
back."

The giggling grew louder. Although they didn't understand the language, they understood the tone.

As much as he resented both the implication that he would be unable to provide a similar protection and the reaction it had evoked, Gerek let it go. His father was fond of saying,
Never fight with a man trying to pick a fight with you. Even if you
win, you'll lose
. When Annice demanded to know what he meant, he'd add,
The
boy understands
. It drove her crazy. Sometimes, Gerek thought that was why his father said it, except that he
did
understand.

"Suit yourself," he said, slowly lowering his aching body down onto the bench.

Bannon bowed again, playing to his audience. When one of the girls called out something, he frowned— not because of what had been said, but because he suddenly remembered who'd have to translate it for him.

As the realization showed in Bannon's expression, Gerek smiled guilelessly. "Did you want something?" he asked.

The young woman added a longer statement along with a lecherous waggle of pale brows. Her friends continued to giggle and one of them shrieked, "Kasya!" in exaggerated horror.

The gist was unmistakable and Bannon couldn't stand not knowing the particulars any longer. "If you could tell me what she said, Your Grace?"

Gerek dropped his chin onto the heel of his left hand. "You know," he drawled,

"that's the first time you've used my title and haven't made it sound like an insult."

"And it could easily be the last,
Your Grace
."

All at once, he was tired of the posturing. Maintaining it took more energy than he had to spare. "She said you had a nice
bow
, emphasis obvious, then she said it was too bad the table blocked so much of the view."

"Did she?" Gerek forgotten in the possibilities, Bannon took two running steps, leaped lightly onto the table, flipped in the air, and landed on the far side. He bowed a third time, then made his way back to his seat by the more conventional route.

The giggling stopped and after a moment's stunned silence, a low-voiced argument ensued.

"End of round one?" Gerek asked as Bannon sat down, impressed in spite of himself.

Bannon smiled, his expression for the first time since Gerek had met him, free of anything but the moment. "The advance, as we say in the army, is on her front."

The innkeeper put a heavily laden tray down between them. "You break anything," she growled, with a pointed look at Bannon's damp footprint on the tabletop, "and you pay for it."

The food was surprisingly good; the stew no more than two days on the fire and the bread soft enough to dip into the gravy without breaking.

Bannon took a cautious sip of the beer and set it aside.

"Too strong for you?" Gerek asked facetiously.

"A strong beer slows your reaction time." Bannon moved his gaze deliberately from Gerek to Gerek's half-empty mug.

Gerek ignored him. He wasn't in the mood.

They were almost finished when the door slammed open. The flames flickered in the half-dozen flax-oil lanterns and one of the old men muttered a curse without looking up from his game. The five men who stomped in, rain dripping from grimy clothes, wore an assortment of scars and identical scowls.

The innkeeper laid a metal-headed club on the counter. "Get out," she said. "I've told you before Jonakus a'Vasil, I don't want you and your boys in here."

The eldest, lamplight reflected in the beads of water on his greasy bald head, held up a purse in a three-fingered hand. "We got money."

Weighing the nearly empty room against her expenses, the innkeeper's eyes narrowed. "One drink each."

"Just one." Jonakus smiled. Under the mashed remains of his nose, most of his teeth were missing. "Sit, boys. I told you she'd do right by us."

Five heavily-muscled bodies dropped onto the benches at the far end of Gerek's and Bannon's table. The old men ignored them, all their attention on the game. The young women nervously shifted positions in order to keep them in sight.

"Hey, Pa!" A sausagelike finger pointed down the table at Bannon. "Look at the pretty little man." Five heads swiveled on bull necks.

"I hear that in the South they cut off their balls to make 'em that pretty."

"What did he say?" Bannon asked.

Gerek shook his head. "You don't want to know."

"I heard," offered one of the others through scabbed lips, "that if you stroke a Southerner just right, they squeal like a pig."

"You squeal, Southerner?"

Teeth clenched, Gerek began to rise.

A viselike grip around his wrist stopped him. "It's me they insult," Bannon said quietly. "So it's my slaughtering fight. Tell me what they said."

Two of them squealed. Three of them laughed.

Gerek told him. Bannon's fingers tightened around his wrist. "I don't need your help," he growled.

"There're five of them."

"I
can
count, Your Grace."

Scowling, Gerek sat back down.
Fine
, he snarled silently.
He thinks he's such
hot shit, he can prove it. I'll be here to pull his butt out of trouble when he gets in
over his head
.

Over his head
seemed an apt observation when the four younger men stood.

"Jonakus!"

He waved a placating hand at the innkeeper. "Don't worry. The boys won't bust nothin' but the pretty little Southerner."

"I'm warning you…"

Her warning came too late. Bannon somehow managed to spit in three out of four faces.

Over the next few moments bellows of rage turned to shrieks of pain that didn't quite drown out the wet crack of more than one joint separating.

Gyhard watched with his mouth open and barely managed to get it shut in time to yell "Don't kill anyone!" before it was all over.

Eyes glittering, Bannon stroked one of his daggers across Jonakus' throat.

"Squeal," he said in heavily accented Shkoden.

Sweat beading the dome of his head, Jonakus stared in horror at the broken, bleeding bodies of his sons and squealed.

Bannon moved the point of the blade to the stubbled chin and lifted Jonakus'

head until their eyes locked. "I see again," he told the older man quietly, "I kill."

The sudden smell of urine and a spreading stain indicated just how much Jonakus believed the threat.

Stepping back, Bannon gestured at the door. "Go."