Mercedes Lackey: Oathblood

"Be patient, my friend," Kethry said without rancor. "We're better off thinning them down somewhat before we engage them at sword's point. There will be time enough for that later.")

When the deaths were obviously at the hands of enemies, there were no clues. Those arrow-slain were found pierced by several makes; those dead by blades seemed to have had their own used on them.

Tarma found herself coming to admire the sorceress more with every passing day. Their arrangement was a partnership in every sense of the word, for when Kethry ran short of magical ploys she turned without pride to Tarma and her expertise in weaponry. Even so, the necessary restrictions that limited them to the ambush and the skills of the assassin chafed at her.

("It will not be much longer," Kethry counseled. "They'll come to the conclusion soon enough that this has been no series of coincidences. Then will be the time for frontal attack.")

The leader, so it was said, ordered that no man go out alone, and all must wear talismans against sorcery.

("See?" Kethry said then. "I told you you'd have your chance.")

A pair of swaggering bullies swilled ale, unpaid for, in the inn. None dared speak in their presence; they'd already beaten one farmer senseless who'd given some imagined insult. They were spoiling for a fight, and the sheeplike timidity of the people trapped with them in the inn was not to their liking. So when a slender young man, black-clad and wearing a sword slung across his back entered the door, their eyes lit with savage glee.

One snaked out a long arm, grasping the young man's wrist. Some of those in the inn marked how his eyes flashed with a hellish joy before being veiled with cold disdain.

"Remove your hand," he said in a harsh voice, "dog-turd."

That was all the excuse the brigands needed. Both drew their weapons; the young man unsheathed his in a single fluid motion. Both moved against him in a pattern they had long found successful in bringing down a single opponent.

Both died within heartbeats of each other.

The young man cleaned his blade carefully on their cloaks before sheathing it. (Some sharp eyes may have noticed that when his hand came in contact with one of the brigand's talismans, the young man seemed to become, for a fleeting second, a harsh-visaged young woman). "This is no town for a stranger," he said to no one and everyone. "I will be on my way. Let him follow me who desires the embrace of the Lady Death."

Predictably, half-a-dozen robbers followed the clear track of his horse into the hills. None returned.

The ranks of his men narrowed to five including himself and the sorcerer, the bandit leader shut them all up in their stronghold.

("Why are these -- ladies -- sheltering us?" Tarma demanded one day, when forced idleness had her pacing the confines of Kethry's rooms like a caged panther.

"Madam Isa grew tired of having her girls abused, and they were more than tired of being abused."

Tarma snorted with scorn. "I should have thought one would learn to expect abuse in such a profession."

"It is one thing when a customer expresses a taste for pain and is willing to pay to inflict it. It is quite another when he does so without paying," Kethry answered with wry humor. Tarma replied to this with something almost like a smile. There was that about her accomplice -- fast becoming her friend -- that could lighten even her grimmest mood. Occasionally the sorceress was even able to charm the Shin'a'in into forgetfulness for hours at a time. And yet -- and yet -- there was never a time she could entirely forget what had driven her here....)

At the end of two months, there were rumors that the chieftain had begun recruiting new underlings, the information passed to other cities via the arcane methods of his sorcerer.

("We'll have to do something to flush at least one of them out," Kethry said at last. "The sorcerer has transported at least three more people into that house. He may have done more -- I couldn't tell if the spell brought one or several at a time, only that he definitely brought people in.")

A new courtesan, property of none of the three Houses, began to ply her trade among those who still retained some of their wealth. One had to be wealthy to afford her services -- but those who spent their hours in her skillful embraces were high in their praise.

("I thought your vows kept you sorcerers from lying," Tarma said, watching Kethry's latest client moaning with pleasure in the dream-trance she'd conjured for him.

"I didn't lie," she answered, eyes glinting green with mischief. "I promised him -- all of them -- an hour to match their wildest dreams. That's exactly what they're getting. Besides, nothing I'd be able to do could ever match what they're conjuring up for themselves!")

The chieftain's sergeant caught a glimpse of her spending an idle hour in the marketplace. He had been without a woman since his chief had forbidden the men to go to the Houses. He could see the wisdom in that: someone was evidently out after the band's hearts, and a House would be far too easy a place in which to set a trap. But this whore was alone but for her pimp, a thin beardless boy who did not even wear a sword, only paired daggers. She should be safe enough. Nor would he need to spend any of his stored coin, though he'd bring it to tempt her. When he'd had his fill of her, he'd teach her that it was better to give her wares to him.

She led him up the stairs to her room above the inn, watching with veiled amusement as he carefully bolted the door behind him. But when he began divesting himself of his weaponry and garments, she halted him, pinioning his arms gently from the rear and breathing enticingly on the back of his neck as she whispered in his ear.

'Time enough, and more, great warrior -- I am sure you have not the taste for common tumblings that are all you can find in this backward place." She slid around to the front of him, urging him down onto the room's single stool, a water-beaded cup in her hand. "Refresh yourself first, great lord. The vintage is of mine own bringing -- you shall not taste its like here-"

It was just Kethry's bad luck that he had been the official "taster" to a high lordling during his childhood of slavery. He sipped delicately out of habit, rather than gulping the wine down, and rolled the wine carefully on his tongue-and so detected in the cup what he should not have been able to sense.

"Bitch!" he roared, throwing the cup aside and seizing Kethry by the throat.

Kethry's panic-filled scream warned Tarma that the plan had gone awry. She wasted no time in battering at the door -- the man was no fool and would have bolted it behind him. It would take too long to break it down. Instead, she sprinted through the crowded inn and out the back through the kitchen. A second cry -- more like a strangled gurgle than a scream, which recalled certain things sharply to her and gave her strength born of rage and hatred -- fell into the stableyard from the open window of Kethry's room. Tarma swarmed up the stable door onto the roof of the building, and launched herself from there in through that window. Her entrance was as unexpected as it was precipitate.

Kethry slowly regained consciousness in her bed in the rented room. She hurt from top to toe -- her assailant had been almost artistic, if one counted the ability to evoke pain among the arts. Oddly enough, he hadn't raped her -- she would have expected that, been able to defend herself arcanely. He'd reacted to the poisoned drink instead by throwing her to the floor and bearing her with no mercy. She'd had no chance to defend herself with magic, and her sword had been left back at the brothel at Tarma's insistence.

Tarma was bathing and tending her hurts. One look at her stricken eyes, and any reproaches she might have uttered died on Kethry's tongue.