Dangerous Games (20 page)

“I can buy us safety for months with this.” She cut him off, then nudged the bag with her bare toe. “Go without us. We wouldn’t like it in the wilds. We’re used to the city.”

“Used to the city?” Sunbright’s voice rose. “Living in tunnels like rats? I can find us a friendly village, maybe even the descendants of the Rengarth. Or we could build a cabin, let the children run free in the woods, teach them to swim in mountain pools, see they eat good, healthy red meat and grain still warm from the fields.”

Knucklebones didn’t answer. At the bed, she pulled back the covers and roused the children. Still more asleep than awake they nevertheless rolled out of bed and picked up their meager belongings. The thief opened a carved chest against one wall, pulled out expensive and ornate clothing that had been hand stitched to Candlemas’s measurements. Summoning the sleepy children, she stripped each of their dirty old rags and fitted them with warm, serviceable clothing, the many folds of cloth tucked and belted. Seeing they’d picked up their dolls and satchels again, she retrieved her sack of hard currency and, without a word, slipped out the door, leading the four children by the hand.

Sunbright shrugged his heavy shoulder scabbard and belt into place and grabbed up a last loaf. “I go with them. We’ll come back once she thinks it’s safe—and we’ve worked out our differences.”

But Candlemas, who didn’t believe in omens, had a sudden premonition of disaster. Maybe it was the black night, maybe the wine, but he worried. “Wait!” he called, “Take something so I can find you.”

Sunbright stood in the doorway. “Make it fast. Knucklebones could outrun a reindeer on the flats.”

Frantic, Candlemas cast about, finally reached behind his ear and ripped loose a tuft of his meager hair. He closed it in the barbarian’s palm. “Burn that if you need me. Then get up high somewhere.”

Sunbright nodded, and with his belt knife, cut a lock of hair so blond it was almost white. Handing it to Candlemas, a strange wistful look crossed his face. He shot out a massive, scarred, and calloused hand, and gave the mage a squeeze that bruised the skin, whispering, “Thank you, friend.”

Then he was gone, and Candlemas was left alone to wonder about many things, but about himself most of all.

Knucklebones made three turns in the dark, then ordered Sunbright to break an inside shutter. They slipped through the window into a garden. The barbarian was amazed at her ability to track inside, in the dark. He couldn’t have found his way outside in an hour, and she’d chosen a different route from the one through which they’d entered.

Along a path under dark trees they tripped, Sunbright the noisiest one in his moosehide soles, which were wearing thin with all this pavement walking. The tundra dweller knew only that they tended downhill until he looked up at the stars. Bad enough to be floating in the air, but the entire island revolved ever so slowly, constantly confusing his sense of direction. But the stars at least were fixed, though this was a southern sky. The Sled and Cappi’s Cat were stretched lengthwise along the northern horizon.

Knucklebones and the children had disappeared around a corner. The stargazer had to trot to catch up. He found Knucklebones perched like an alley cat between the spears of a wrought iron fence. She reached down and caught the children by the scruff to haul them over. Sunbright admired her quiet strength, her calm poise. He grabbed the spears to vault up and over, but she stiffened, sniffing the air.

Abruptly she pushed Sunbright back down, then hissed to the children as she handed them the loot sack, “Get to Sleeping Gunn! He’ll take you in.” Then she hopped down beside Sunbright, snagged his vest front, and led him along the fence to a globe-lit corner.

He asked, “Why are we going where it’s light?”

“Lead them away from the children!”

Without pause, she dashed across the street into an alley. “Pull that hammer,” she whispered. “We’ll need it.”

“Who’s coming?” he asked. Her tension was catching.

She vaulted a puddle that Sunbright splashed through.

“Trackers!” she breathed. “Rushworth and Pericles’s crowd!”

Sunbright hadn’t seen or heard anyone. He could see even less in this black alley. He started to whisper, “How did you—”

“They’ve a special soap they wash in to remove human scent. But nonhumans can smell the soap.”

She ducked down an alley just as dark as the first and up three long steps. Sunbright could barely keep from falling. She was fleet and nimble as a deer, and with only one eye, he marveled.

He ran into her thin, bony arm, blocking his path.

“In here.”

She jerked open a door and they passed within. Sunbright smelled polished wood and dust, books, a trace of food grease. It was no combination he knew. “Where are we?”

“Academy of Mentalist Study. A college. It’s always open, but they’ll know that too. Suck in your gut!”

“Who? Why?”

As they edged around a wooden corner, Sunbright felt bile burp at the back of his throat. His head felt empty, as if he’d suddenly been hung upside down again. He could tell from barely audible echoes that the room was large, and they were not alone. Knucklebones was counting shelves as they passed.

A light flared in the center of the room.

Sunbright gulped. He thought “center,” because the room used all six surfaces as floors. The room was huge, taking up the whole building like a cave, and intermediate floors had been built here and there, jutting from other floors at angles. Bookshelves stood head high on every floor, and open spots with tables and chairs broke up the center. Above their heads on an in-between floor, like a fly stuck to the ceiling, was a man with a fierce red beard and horsetail, and dark, unadorned clothes. He flicked his fingers and sent more balls of glowing energy spinning through the room. So Knucklebones wasn’t the only one who could illuminate with her fingertips. With his free hand he tapped a silver coin on his belt.

“You’re getting slow, Knuckle’,” the man offered. “I got ahead of you.”

Knucklebones didn’t argue, only fled between bookshelves, leapt like a mountain goat, and gained another “floor.” Chasing her, Sunbright was staring at the top of her head for an instant, then he stumbled and righted himself on what had been a wall. His eyes and stomach liked none of it, but he kept running.

To no avail. Every floor had a door looking out on a corridor, and each doorway was blocked by a man or woman. Green capes were thrown back to reveal a skull and crossbones painted on their black shirts. In the eerie light of the drifting glowlights, the crossed bones showed jagged breaks. Knucklebones backed into Sunbright.

The redheaded man quit the left-hand floor, strolled to a doorway, and slipped past an assassin. Sunbright assumed the tracker had found them, and now came the killing. The assassins toted either crossbows with silver-tipped quarrels or long bullwhips forked at the ends like a snake’s tongue.

One of the assassins, a woman with blonde hair pulled back tightly, called, “You can leave, Knucklebones. The Bonebreakers have no quarrel with you, and you’re not in the contract.”

Sunbright drew Harvester and looked for a screen against crossbow bolts. It wasn’t easy to find one, for the glowlights cast wide, square shadows that chased one another. This was a bad place for a flatlander to be fighting, he thought.

But even as his brain began to sing with a battle high, he marveled that Knucklebones knew every building in the city inside and out, and that everyone knew her.

The thief called, “Who bought you?”

The blonde shook her head while snapping the safety off her crossbow. But behind her came a crow of laughter. A young fop in a brocaded shirt, satin cape, small hat, and face powder stepped out. He panted, obviously having run to see the show.

“I hired them! Same as I bought the cooperation of the city guards. You killed a fistful of them, didn’t you? But they wiped out your nest, I hear!”

For once, Knucklebones didn’t know somebody. She asked Sunbright, “Who?”

“Hurodon, son of Angeni of the House of Dreng in the Street of the Golden Willows,” growled the barbarian. “My biggest mistake so far. I should have torn his head off in the park.”

Hurodon laughed. “If she’s your friend, I’ll pay for her too!”

The blonde woman nodded, called, “Sorry, Knuckle’. Nothing personal. Loose!”

As the four crossbows shot, Sunbright shoved Knucklebones headlong into a rack of books. The freestanding shelves had no backs, and the barbarian shoved hard. The thief catapulted into the books, knocked them out the other side, and tumbled after them. At the same time, Sunbright used the impetus of his shove to backpedal out of harm’s way.

The four bolts arrived almost simultaneously, and acted like nothing Sunbright expected. They were mad as the rest of the room.

One bolt thumped a book sliding across Knucklebone’s back. The red book was thick as a knapsack, yet the bolt penetrated so the head projected out the other side. A second bolt Sunbright spanked away with the flat of his blade. It shattered and clattered off the bookshelves. The third he never saw, for he was distracted by the fourth.

Unbelievably, he saw it strike the wooden floor but not break. Instead it ricocheted, bending in a curve for an instant to speed at him. A slap and sting banged his ham, and he knew he was shot. It was painful as a bear’s bite. But it was a small bolt, and if he broke off the head—

“Don’t break it!” Knucklebones screamed, diving through the bookshelf at him. “It digs itself deeper! Hold still!” And she yanked the barb free, the head bloody and clinging to shreds of Sunbright’s meat. That hurt, like fire jabbed into a wound.

From somewhere he heard, “Close! Nock!”

“Split up!” Knucklebones yelled. Headlong she dived over the heap of books to take refuge in partial shadows.

“No!” shouted the barbarian. But she’d whisked out of sight.

Cursing, he knew why she’d done it. Thieves didn’t fight, they fled. And if one of the gang were caught, splitting up would see the others free. So be it. He didn’t have time to argue.

He ducked, then skidded on his boots and aching butt around the end of a bookcase. At the command, “Loose!” he jerked the bookcase down onto himself.

An enchanted bolt slammed the floor by his head, bent and spanked into the air. But it only tagged a cascading book, nicking the corner and spinning away. Another bolt splintered a wooden shelf.

A third ripped through his thigh.

Gasping at the searing pain, he reached behind his thigh, grabbed the shank of the arrow—it was made of some queer, pliable material unlike anything he’d ever felt—and ripped downward.

As if watching someone else suffer, he saw the black fletching protruding through his thigh disappear into the tanned flesh. A flare of agony blazed through him, then the arrow was clear. He hurled it away, red with his blood, sucked wind, and struggled up to find two assassins with whips closing at either hand. And Knucklebones nowhere in sight.

Sunbright tracked both of the assassins, flicking his head from side to side. He pushed the pain in his thigh out of his mind. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he’d been shot with an arrow. As a boy, practicing, learning with the other boys, he’d often limp home, his aching body resembling nothing less than a pin cushion of little toy arrows. But then, these weren’t toy arrows….

Keeping Harvester poised before him to strike either way, he tried to anticipate the assassins’ next move. But these two, a man and woman, had worked together before.

At a “Hup!” they both curled their arms and lashed out perfectly in time. The black coils snapped at Sunbright, too close to his eyes. He jumped, but was caught by both wrists. Immediately, like wranglers taming a wild horse, they set their feet and pulled with the full weight of their bodies. Sunbright fought to keep from being spread-eagled, but he knew this was just a delaying tactic. They were merely holding him for—

—here they came. Two crossbowmen jogging through the stacks of books to aim and pierce him through.

He was pinned, surrounded, helpless and about to be shot. There was no way out.

Then he remembered. There was one more way….

Black lengths of leather dug into Sunbright’s wrists as the two Bonebreakers yanked so hard and viciously that the barbarian couldn’t get a grip to shake them off. He was hard put to hang on to Harvester, and couldn’t angle it to slice the thongs. The weird glowing lights bobbing throughout the room like will o’wisps cast long and short shadows that revolved like manic dancers, yet he saw two assassins take aim with their crossbows. He was blocked or threatened in every direction except from above, so that’s the way he went.

With a mighty grunt, Sunbright clambered up the bookshelves. He wasn’t sure what to expect, but if people could run across the “ceiling,” and one “ceiling” was an intermediate floor not twenty feet away, then he could get there if he were desperate enough.

And he was certainly desperate enough.

Planting a big boot on a stout middle shelf, he vaulted up the bookcase, took a wild stab for a higher one, grabbed it, and gained the top. Books cascaded off the shelves and into the path of the increasingly reluctant Bonebreakers. He was dragging them along by their whips with brute strength.

One of them let go, the handle of his whip jerked from his hands. The other managed to hang on as Sunbright gained the top of the shelves with both feet. A crossbow bolt flew by and the barbarian jumped into open space.

The one clinging whip jerked him off course so he ended up flying sideways, but he clearly saw and felt the weird transition. One second he was leaping upward, as ungainly as a yak trying to take flight, the next he was free of the pull of the library floor and grabbed by the magical gravity of the one above. His stomach flipped, he tasted bile, then his feet and body were hauled upward, which instantly became downward.

Sunbright flung out a hand, kicked, bounced off the edge of a bookshelf, and crashed hard onto the floor. At the last second he’d cradled his head; a good thing, for his elbow clipped wood so hard that pain flashed up and down his arm like lightning. His boots slammed down, and Harvester jarred across his lap, slicing his shirt and nearly killing him.