Among Thieves

Chapter Thirty

I rolled to my right, getting out of any direct line of fire. The candle flame had been dim, but it was still going to take a moment or two for my night vision to adjust. I didn’t want to be caught standing still, waiting to see my death coming at me.

That was assuming my vision would adjust. My stepfather had performed the ritual nearly twenty years ago; with magic that old, Jelem hadn’t been sure what the candle would do to it. Like everything else tonight, it was a risk.

I circled two steps farther to my right in the darkness, silently drawing my rapier as I went, and waited. I could hear Shadow in front of me, muttering under his breath. Then I saw the hint of a gesture-an amber-hued blur several yards away that looked like a hand passing rapidly through the air. And another. And then, rapidly, I saw the image of a cloaked figure, crouched and gesticulating in the darkness, the rectangle of a book lying at his feet, all but forgotten.

The air before Shadow was empty: of power, of light, of threat. I slipped farther to my right, moving to circle behind, even as he reached to his belt and tossed a scattering of coins before him. They clinked on the floorboards, refusing to melt and burn as they had against Degan.

Shadow was no fool. As soon as he saw that his portable glimmer wasn’t going to help him, he turned and raced back the way he had come. I couldn’t blame him; if I were in a dark room with a man who put out the lights, I’d want out, too. People don’t set up situations like that without a plan.

I flicked my left hand, felt the wrist knife drop into it, and let fly. I knew better than to try to hit him-it was dark, he was moving, and I was throwing left-handed. The odds of my even bouncing the pommel off him were negligible. But hitting the wall hard enough so the blade made a loud noise against it, and then again when it fell to the floor-that was another matter entirely.

Shadow skidded to a halt at the sound. In an instant his sword was out, sweeping before, beside, and behind him in a deadly circle. When no one tried to stab him, he began backing slowly away, two steps at a time.

“It was the candle, wasn’t it?” he said to the darkness. “It interfered with the magic somehow.” I could see his cowl searching back and forth for any hint of motion, of sound. His left hand made another pass in the air. Nothing happened. “And I can’t imagine the darkness was an accident, either. Which means you have a way of finding me, yes?”

I stayed silent and adjusted my course so that I would come at his back from an angle.

Shadow swept his blade through the air again and shifted direction. Another cut, another direction, then two more steps, a series of cuts that whistled as they clove the air, then a dodge and a quick thrust across his body.

I couldn’t tell if it was a patterned drill or just a collection of random counters, but whatever it was, it kept him-and more important, his sword-moving in an unpredictable manner. He was doing his best to create a wall of steel around himself; one I would have to breach if I wanted to get this over with quickly.

And it needed to be quick.

I reached down and pulled out my boot dagger. As much as I would have liked to dust him with a single thrust, I knew it didn’t always work out that way. Swords like mine can wound just as easily as they can kill, but get in close with a dagger, and the odds of someone going home dead go way up-especially if one of the people can’t see.

I dropped my sword’s tip so that it just skimmed the floor. I came on.

Shadow was tending left, trying to get to one of the walls. His sword was still moving, his fingers still dancing. I slipped closer. Two steps more now, at most.

“Are you using the night vision?” he said as he cut a circle around himself.

I froze. His face was pointed directly at me. Then he looked away. I let out my breath.

“I’ve heard of it, of course,” said Shadow, “but I’ve never known anyone who had it.” His cowl shook back and forth. “If I’d only known

… The use I could have made of you.”

I stood up straight. “You used me enough as it was,” I said. Then I dropped.

Shadow immediately threw a cut at where my voice had been. He was good; even crouched low, I felt the breeze of his sword’s passing, telling me he had gone for my body and not my head-bigger target, better odds.

I did the same, only I pushed a thrust from down near the floor, low to high, right at his ribs. My sword connected, stuck and… bowed?

I felt the scrape of metal on metal down the length of my rapier, could hear a faint grinding as I twisted the blade in a move that should have stirred up his insides but only managed to pucker and turn the fabric of his doublet. Shadow let out a grunt but didn’t fall or bleed.

Armor. Chain mail, by the feel of it, under his clothes.

Bastard.

I pushed my rapier’s point deeper into Shadow’s chain mail and lifted the guard above my head even as I lashed out at his leg with my dagger. Our blades connected at the same instant-my dagger with his leg; his sword with my rapier. It didn’t go well for either of us. While I managed to lay open a sloppy gash above his boot, Shadow brought his sword down hard enough on mine to snap it in two. I’d been hoping the force of his cut would act like a hammer on a nail and drive my rapier’s point through his armor, but, instead, my bracing the blade had simply made it easier for him to break.

Damn Shadow and his Black Isle steel blade, anyhow.

I leapt back, barely avoiding a blind follow-up, and scrambled away.

“Nice try,” said Shadow. His voice was tighter than it had been a moment ago. “Lucky for me I’m not the trusting sort, eh?”

“What, you mean the armor?” I said as I slipped back across the room toward the satchel. “That just means I’m going to have to take you apart a bit at a time, starting at the edges.” I tossed the remains of my rapier noisily off to my right.

Shadow’s cowl swiveled toward the sound of the rapier’s hilt hitting the floor, then came back in my direction. The fingers of his left hand were dancing again. He was favoring his right leg.

“You think so?” he said. He began cutting at the air around him, forming the deadly circle once more. “Considering you just lost your sword to someone who can’t see in the dark, I’d say you have your work cut out for you.”

I grinned darkly from across the room as I knelt down beside the bag and reached inside. “You got lucky,” I said as my hand closed on the handle of Iron Degan’s sword. I drew it out softly and stood up, hefting it. Iron’s Black Isle steel practically danced in my hand. It was a heavier blade than I was used to, weighted more for the cut than the thrust, and slightly curved, but it would do. “I don’t think I need anything more than a dagger to take care of you,” I said. “Not in the dark.”

Smiling, I turned toward Shadow and took a step. Then my smile faded.

There. A spark of light on the tips of his fingers, so faint it was barely visible even with my night vision.

I blinked. Had I imagined it? And if not, had he noticed it?

Shadow’s fingers moved slowly, carefully. A flicker of ghostly light slithered along them, faded. Shadow chuckled, soft and low.

He’d noticed.

The magic was coming back.

Jelem hadn’t been able to tell me how long the effects of the candle would last. It all came down to how long it burned and how much magic it ate up. The longer, the better. I’d been hoping to get a good three hours off it, but Shadow’s early arrival had barely given me one. Which, it seemed, translated into less than five minutes of no magic.

I sprang forward, Iron’s sword high, my dagger low, and ran at him. There wasn’t time for quiet anymore-no knives in the dark, no circling for the perfect shot, no trying to make the bastard sweat like he deserved. It had become a simple matter of me getting to Shadow before the magic got to him. If I beat it, I had a chance-the darkness was still on my side, after all; if I didn’t, well, like I said, I’d seen the bastard fight.

I was still three steps away when the fire bloomed in Shadow’s hand. My heart sank and my eyes burned at the sudden light, but I kept coming. I yelled, just for the hell of it.

I don’t know if it was the yell or the surprise of suddenly seeing me nearly on top of him, but Shadow staggered back. This was a good thing, since it meant that the whiplike tendril of flame he sent arcing out passed over my left shoulder, instead of hitting me square in the face. The bad thing was that I could still feel the heat of the fire’s passage as it went by my ear and cheek.

I flinched, and that was enough to throw off my cut. Instead of coming down where Shadow’s neck met his shoulder, the heavy blade dipped low, sloping toward his left leg. Shadow caught my sword on his own and used the impact to bring his own tip over and around, ready for a cut of his own.

I closed in fast, rushing to put myself inside the arc of his attack. Swords have more power near the point when swung, and getting past it would keep me safer. At the same time, I struck with my dagger, over and over, using short, underhand thrusts. I kept meeting chain mail with the point, but I didn’t care; I just needed to stay in close, where my size and the dagger gave me an advantage. Even if I wasn’t separating any links, I was driving the mail into him-hard. With luck, I’d break a couple of ribs and maybe even rupture something.

Shadow pivoted, trying to shift with my attack. I could feel the pommel of his sword hitting me in the back, but he didn’t have the right angle to put any real force behind it. I pressed forward even harder and alternated my dagger thrusts-now low, now high, now from the side-to make it harder for him to catch my arm with his free hand. If I could get the blade under his arm, or even up along the side of his head…

Then I saw his left hand come up and begin to pass before my face, just like before.

I turned and dropped away. An instant later, my shadow was projected on the floor in front of me by a brilliant flash of light from behind.

I felt burning-in my eyes, not on my face-as I stumbled away. It wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been in the alley; I could still see the floor, still make out my hand in front of me, although everything seemed to be shifting. Amber mixed with yellow in my vision and ran across everything in waves, rather than the constant highlighting I was used to. It looked almost like…

Oh.

I raised my eyes. The back wall of the room was on fire. Shadow’s arc of flame must have continued past me and hit the old wood and plaster and lathe. It was no roaring inferno yet, but, judging by how quickly things were spreading, it wouldn’t take too long to get there.

I spun around. Shadow was maybe ten paces away, bent over slightly, his left forearm pressed against his side. His sword sat ready in his right hand; in his left, near his chest, I saw the glint of coins.

“No darkness anymore, Drothe,” he said in the glowing, growing light of the fire. “No glimmered candles.” He straightened slowly and squared his shoulders. “My turn.”

He took a step and I ran, not toward the doorway, but to the blanket I’d been using as a pad. At this point, only one of us was going to get out of here; heading for the door would only get me a sword-or something worse-in the back.

I cast the dagger away and swept up the blanket with my left hand. Turning, I was just able to avoid the first molten blob that came flying through the air. I shook out the blanket, shifted my hand, and spun the fabric twice through the air, wrapping it around my hand and forearm. That left a couple of feet of cloth hanging free, giving me a flexible wall of fabric to use either as a shield or a whip.

I swept another coin from the air with the blanket, then a third. Two more came after that, with Shadow right behind them.

He wasn’t playing now. Shadow didn’t set up out of measure and ease in, or play with my blade, or stand back and cast coins at me until I was a smoldering, exhausted mess; he came in fast, his sword a fire-tinted blur in his hand. A cut at my head, a second, then a switch to an attack on my outside line, followed by a thrust and then another slash, all in fewer heartbeats than it takes to tell. I caught the first two on my sword, got lucky when the blanket intercepted the next, barely backed away from the fourth, and watched as the last cut swept by, three finger breadths from my face.

I followed up with a counterthrust, but Shadow turned it aside almost absently and flicked a coin at my neck. I didn’t have time to get the blanket up, so I instead rolled my head and neck away as best I could.

I felt a searing pain just inside the ball of my left shoulder. I screamed and backed away.

I crouched lower and extended the blanket out before me. The room was brighter now, and I was beginning to feel the heat of the fire as it ran up the wall. I saw my right arm trembling in the wavering light. Part of that was nerves, I knew, but part was fatigue as well; I wasn’t used to Iron Degan’ sword, and even the addition of half a pound of blade can make a big difference.

If this went on much longer, I wasn’t going to be able to maintain any kind of solid guard. Then again, if it went on too long, we might both die when the roof collapsed, or the air ran out, or the heat cooked us. None of the options appealed, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it at the moment-I was too busy being outmatched.

Then Shadow threw three coins at once, and I suddenly knew exactly what to do.

Three coins meant I couldn’t dodge-not all of them; three coins meant I had to commit to blocking them; three coins meant Shadow was coming right behind them, counting on their threat to clear his way.

Three coins meant I had him-I hoped.

As the coins spread out and turned liquid, I fanned the blanket out and up, catching them in its folds and sending them off to my left. I let that action draw my left arm back and turn me into profile. Then, I extended my sword.

I’d seen Degan do this before, and had even tried it myself once or twice. He called it a simple voiding of the body; I called it damn slick. The idea was that you got your body out of the way while you left your sword in place, thus allowing your opponent to throw himself on it when he attacked. Degan had made it look like high art; the best I usually managed was a child’s rough sketch in the dirt. But it worked.

Usually.

I saw the flash and felt the breeze of Shadow’s blade passing through the space where I had been. Even better, I felt my sword bite-only it seemed wrong.

I looked down the blade, and my heart went cold. I had extended Iron’s sword into Shadow’s path all right, but I had forgotten about the curve in the blade. Where a rapier’s straight blade would have planted its point in the middle of the Gray Prince’s face, Iron’s tip instead sloped off to my right. What should have been a killing thrust had instead ended up sliding past his face and coming out through the side of the cowl. I might have grazed a cheek if I was lucky, but I hadn’t come close to stopping the Gray Prince in his tracks.

I pulled back on the sword, trying to turn a missed thrust into a savage gash to the face, but Shadow’s left hand flashed up and grabbed the back of my right. Then he twisted.

Muscles and bones strained against one another along my arm, all of them turning the wrong way. The pain bent me forward, then down to my knees, my arm still straight out beside me. I felt my fingers loosen, felt Iron’s sword taken from my grasp. It clattered on the floor. Then something hard-Shadow’s sword pommel? The whole guard?-tapped me near the base of my skull.

I dropped to all fours, Shadow letting go of my arm at the last instant.

I heard a roaring, but only part of it was in my head. I glanced behind me. The back wall was now a sheet of flame. Overhead, above Shadow, the ceiling was obscured by a roiling black cloud. If it wasn’t already burning up there, it would be shortly.

Shadow didn’t seem to notice or care. His sword was extended, its point inches from my upturned face. Shadow reached up with his left hand and put a finger through the hole I had made in his cowl. He smiled. His sword didn’t waver.

“Close,” he said. He looked back down at me. “You should have just taken the deal.”

“I still would have wound up dead.”

Shadow shrugged. “Of course you would. You tried to dust me-that can’t be tolerated. But at least it would have been, well, fairly quick. Now, though…” Shadow gestured at the glow of the fire behind me. “I hear the smoke kills you before the flames. Let’s hope that’s the case, for your sake.” He shifted the sword so it hovered over my back, then raised it, ready for the crippling stroke.

Well, at least he wouldn’t have reason to go after Ana anymore. That was something.

“Screw you,” I said, and I braced for the blow.

Shadow’s arm was just beginning to descend when something came flying out of the darkness and shattered against the back of his head. Brown and beige fragments bloomed around his cowl. Shadow staggered. His sword drove into the floor beside my feet.

Without thinking, I put my right hand up to his belt and came away with his purse. Shadow righted himself and pulled his sword free. He glanced at the doorway, then back at me-just in time for me to drag open the strings of the purse with my teeth and cast its contents full into his cowl.

Don’t let them be keyed to him like my rope, I prayed to the Angels. Don’t let the damn things be keyed.

Over the flames, I could hear the hiss of the coins as they hit the air, followed by a wetter sound as the molten metal found Shadow’s face.

Shadow screamed and collapsed on the floor, clawing at the inside of his hood. I reached over and drew Iron Degan’s sword to me. I stood.

Shadow’s writhing stopped the second time I thrust the sword into his cowl. Then I looked up.

Degan was standing in the doorway. He had another piece of battered crockery in his right hand-he must have found a squatter’s stash somewhere-and his bronze-chased sword in his left.

I laughed out loud and almost sat down on the floor. Degan, here, saving me again. Even after what I’d done. I laughed some more.

I hadn’t even thought to hope.

Had he followed me, or Shadow? Part of me-the bit that housed my professional pride-hoped it had been the latter, but I had my doubts. If anyone could stick to my blinds without my knowing it, it was Degan. Not that I minded; not in the least.

The roof was burning now, and a fallen ceiling beam had split the room in two. There was a small gap at the far end, but the fire moving along the wall was close to reaching that area. Once it did, the opening would be too narrow, if not gone altogether.

I moved to go around, then paused as I remembered Ioclaudia’s journal. It was lying on my side of the room near the burning timber, smoldering but not yet alight.

Degan followed my gaze. When I looked back at him, he shook his head and dropped the bit of crockery on the floor. Then he turned away.

“Wait!” I yelled.

Degan turned back around. As I watched, the smoke beginning to sting my eyes, Degan drew himself up straight and raised his sword to his lips. It was the same gesture he had made back in the Cloisters, when we had exchanged the Oath, except now he was staring straight into my eyes. He didn’t blink as he kissed the blade, or as he flourished it in the firelight, or as he threw it onto the floor before him. He just met my eyes. Then Degan turned away and was gone.

It was over: the Oath, our friendship, his life as a degan. I knew it as sure as I knew my own mind. All the debts were paid for him, all the accounts closed. It was just as he had predicted: Binding ourselves with the Oath had broken everything else between us, and more.

I didn’t move to follow him. I wouldn’t embarrass him like that, wouldn’t go after something that was already gone.

I was a Nose: I knew when a trail had run out.

The smoke was starting to fill the place now, making me cough, blurring my vision. I found my way to the journal and had to kick it away from the fire because it was too hot to touch. Its cover was more char than leather now, and one corner of the tome had begun to turn crispy black.

Which gave me an idea.

I smiled grimly in that small corner of what felt like hell and wrapped the journal in the blanket. It wouldn’t do to burn it up-not just yet, anyhow.

I retrieved Iron’s sword and laid it across Shadow’s body. A few right words in the right ears, and the Order of the Degans would find the twisted remains of the sword here, along with Shadow’s burned husk. Let them think a Gray Prince had killed their brother and kept the sword as a trophy-Shadow was certainly arrogant enough to make it plausible. It wouldn’t ease Degan’s conscience any, but it might keep his former brothers from hunting him down.

Not the parting gift I would have wanted, but it was the best I could manage.

I gathered up the journal and headed for the outside wall. I was on all fours by now, nearly blind from the smoke. I could feel cinders settling on me from above, burning the backs of my hands and neck, singeing my hair, smoldering my clothes. Those spots felt only a bit warmer than the rest of me at this point.

I reached the wall sooner than I expected and crawled along it until I was able to make out a patch of calm, shiftless black above me. I reached up, levered my torso over the window ledge, and let myself fall.

It was two stories down, but I wasn’t about to complain.