Stonewiser (8 page)

The stone dated to a recent festival. Examining the tale's contents and fashions, the exchange between Leandro and the storyteller seemed recent as well. Sariah exhaled slowly, allowing her mind to relax. She dipped her brush in the ink and set it to the parchment to record her wising. A very faint noise interrupted her concentration.

A ripple's quiet murmur. A silent dribble of drops. A foot, rising slowly out of the water. A year ago, she would have thought nothing of a ripple and a drip in the vast expanse of dead water, but now her ears were attuned to the flats and trained to understand the dangers. The deck swayed imperceptibly. Whoever was coming for her was good. Sariah reached for her rotfish fang dirk, the one Kael had been training her to use. She tucked herself to one side of the shuttered door. A trickle of sweat ran the length of her spine. She waited.

The sudden attack came not through the door, as Sariah expected, but from the side. A long weaved body crashed through the small window and landed in a crouch, facing her. Sariah remembered her basics. Survey your enemy. Find the strengths. Find the weaknesses.

The trouble was the warrior before her seemed to be all strength and no weaknesses. He was a full head taller than she was. Muscles bulged on his upper arms and shoulders. A long lithe leg struck first, aiming at Sariah's dirk. Sariah blocked the kick, but found herself trapped in the corner between the assailant and the wall. A gleaming hatchet descended on her like the belch's rage. Sariah blocked the blow with her forearms. She feinted high but came up from beneath, seeking her opponent's underbelly. Her blade clashed against the hatchet instead.

Sariah barely stepped back in time to avoid a hammer to the head. With blades on one side, a hammer head on the other and topped by a wicked spike, the hatchet was a fearful weapon. Sariah tried to reach for her pocket but the assailant anticipated her move. The ax slashed through Sariah's weave, ripping her pocket open, spilling the stones on the floor. She tried to make the stones burst, but without her palm's recent contact, the stones didn't work. The hatchet's blade bounced off her banishment bracelet, shocking her with a painful jolt. The pain propelled Sariah forward. She managed a fist to her opponent's face. She drew blood in the process.

“So you fight with more than stones, kitten,” her opponent rumbled. “Not bad for a Goodlander weakling.”

A woman. Sariah now knew she faced a woman. Not that it made any difference, because the woman was obviously a deadly warrior. She launched a fulminating attack—a series of kicks that left Sariah weaponless and pinned under her knee.

Sariah fumbled for a weapon. She singed her fingertips against something hot. It was her little desk lamp, which had tipped over onto the floor. The flammable mud in it still burned brightly. In one swift motion, she snatched the scorching lamp and smashed it against the woman's back.

Flames flickered over her opponent's weave. Sariah dove for her dirk, but even with her weave on fire, the other woman beat her to it. She kicked Sariah to the corner and then crashed back-first against the door shutters, smothering the flames.

The back of Sariah's head cracked against the corner post. The world swayed with the deck. The moonlight streaming through the broken window dimmed and blurred in painful sequence. The woman loomed over her, smoldering like a demon crawling out of Meliahs’ rot pit. Sariah knew she should be dead by now. The woman was simply too good a fighter. Why then was she still alive?

“You fight good, kitten, but not good enough for Delis,” her assailant said in a low raspy voice and a thick accent that lengthened her vowels when she spoke. “It's a pity I have to kill you. I would so like to keep you.”

Blue and violet eyes stared at Sariah, feverish with death. The lethal hatchet rose in the air and began its final descent. A whistle broke the silence, and then a solid thump. The woman froze. The hatchet slipped from her hand and clattered on the floor. She toppled over Sariah, trapping her under an avalanche of muscular weight. Sariah struggled to get out from under the woman, trying to understand what had just happened.

Blood. It stained Sariah's hand, but it wasn't her blood. An arrow protruded from her attacker's back. The deck shook with the steps of many feet. Faces peered through the smashed window. A crash shattered what remained of the door's shutter. Four or five people broke into the shelter. With a cursory look at them, Sariah understood. She had gone from bad to worse—the mob had found her.

The bearded man snorted like a rutting pig. “What do we have here? If it isn't the hawk and the snake sharing the nest?”

The woman stirred. Despite her wound, she pushed herself off Sariah and slumped against the wall, eyeing the newcomers with open hatred. Her hands fumbled for her hatchet. The man took a knee in front of her.

“Delis, darling, is it you?” He peeked under the weave that covered her face. “Thank you for disarming the wiser witch for us. They sent the best after this one, I see. We've paid our fees. We've found our prize. Why is it you insist on stealing our reward?”

Delis snarled. “Up your arse, you peddler's bitch. You'd sell your mother for dung—”

The man cuffed her in the face. “I cannot kill you with my own hands, not for lack of want, mind you, but on account of the law. I won't be blamed for your loss.” He called on the other men. “Throw her out into the dead water.”

Wounded as she was, Delis kicked and punched and crashed against Sariah before no less than six men were finally able to drag her out of the shelter.

“She's wounded,” Sariah said. “She'll die.”

“That's the point, you slow-witted slut,” the man said. “We'll let the Domain do some of the murdering this night, but don't worry, we won't let it do all of the killing. Fire the deck,” he said to his minions. “Let none of her foul witchery survive the night.”

Sariah recognized the man's broad nose and the stubbly beard. The mob's leader was the same man who had tried to kill her at the nets and who had defied Kael afterwards. Josfan. That was his name. Coin aside, he was set on eliminating her and all traces of her passing. Two men dragged Sariah to her feet. A shovelful of flammable mud later, the deck ignited with a muted swoosh.

She eyed the flames. “Why are you doing this?”

“It's our right, isn't it? We paid for it and we'll get paid for it too.”

“But you, Josfan, you really want me dead. You paid a lot at the nets to shoot at me. Did someone send you after me?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” Josfan flashed his hideous smile. “Justice it is, wench, that you who broke the wall and tried to destroy the New Blood will end up as a sprinkle of ashes fizzling in the dead water.”

“If you burn me, you won't have a body to collect on.”

“But I don't need your body to collect my reward. I just need your bracelet.”

Of course. The bracelet would offer more than sufficient proof of her death. Sariah struggled with the thugs who tried to stretch out her arm. Her shoulder and elbow ached from the strain. Her forearm ended up splayed on her desk anyway. A serrated saw appeared in Josfan's hand, a big rusting brute of a blade which could have easily belonged to an enduring wood cutter or to one of the Shield's quartering blocks. Josfan wetted his lips and tested the saw's teeth against her forearm.

“I wouldn't do that, if I were you.” Sariah unclenched her fist. A black stone gleamed on the palm of her hand. “Step away from me. All of you. Or do you wish to join me in a quick trip to Meliahs’ rot pits?”

Josfan froze. The men let go of her and scurried out the door, cursing and making the sign against evil. The stone had been Delis's surprising parting gift. The woman must have lifted it from the floor while resisting Josfan's cronies. She had also used the ruckus to sneak the stone into Sariah's hands. Sariah owed the woman a most unlikely and unexpected debt.

“You witch,” Josfan spat. “You wouldn't blow yourself up just to spite us.”

“Stay and find out.”

The saw wilted in Josfan's hands. He took one step back, and then another, before diving for the door and abandoning the deck. Sariah tracked his retreat as closely as she was tracking the fire. She had only a few moments to act.

“We won't let you out of here alive,” Josfan shouted from a safe distance. “We just have to wait until the fire burns you. I'll have your bracelet even if I have to sift through your ashes. You've made a huge mistake. We've got you surrounded. You've worked yourself into a death trap.”

Meliahs help her. Perhaps she had.

Seven

 

T
HE FLAMES WERE
mesmerizing and beautiful, a flowing mane of color and heat that dazzled the eye. The smoke stung her lungs and eyes. She fought the panic and ignored the heat pressing from all directions. She grabbed the stones she had been wising from the floor and stuffed them in her sack, cramming as many of the engrossments and annotations that were not already on fire in the bag as well. Burned deck. No supplies. Long journey ahead. She had to save as much as she could.

She stuffed the sack with whatever garments she could find. She grabbed her own bag, the one she had packed before the executioners came, and reached for Kael's favorite belongings, his winter cloak, his medicine pouch, the jar of wised marbles for his sling. No chance of taking the rest. Shame.

The smoke was too thick. Despite the enduring wood construction and the protective coating, the base of the deck was beginning to burn. She couldn't breathe. She had to get out. They would be waiting for her with slings loaded and bows drawn.

She groped through her bag and found more stones. She hurled a first stone towards the back of the shelter and willed it to explode when it hit the wall. It burst into a mess of fiery weave and shattered wood. She took cover against the arrows aimed at her behind the cargo stacked on the back deck, but the fire was hot and lapping at her weave. She used her sling to launch the second stone. It burst amidst the group shooting at her, unleashing a second explosion of cries and curses. It was her cue to break through.

She was glad she always kept her weave on when they traveled. She leapt over the cargo and landed in knee-high water. She counted five, maybe six decks of followers surrounding her. She chose at random. She hurled her stone at one of the empty decks, crouched as it exploded, and ran through the fallout into the open flats.

Nafa. She aimed towards the settlement's lights. She didn't have any other option. She ran the water as fast as she could, but the men assembled a cohesive chase right away, and an arrow skimmed the water's surface too close to her legs. No alternative then. She loaded her sling at a run, then stopped, turned, shot her last stone and commanded it to burst.

She didn't wait to see the effects of her defense. She didn't enjoy the thought, either. Meliahs forgive her. She loathed having to misuse stones for violence. She ran as fast as she could, knowing what would happen if the mob caught her.

In the dark, her senses were keen and her heart pumped hard in support of her legs. Raised in the Goodlands, she wasn't the strongest of water runners, but she pushed herself to exceed her body's limits, despite the load she carried. She must have been halfway between her burning deck and Nafa when she saw the hunched shadow stumbling ahead of her. She recognized the shaft protruding from her back. Delis. She fell twice in the dead water before Sariah reached her. The second time, she didn't get up.