Laura Resnick - The Purifying Fire

“What… What did…

What?” “All good questions,” Liliana told him. “Are you all right?”

“I–I’ll live.” “Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.” She reached down to offer the flustered fellow a hand up-then yanked it away as he began leaning on her, allowing him to fall flat on his face once more. The floorboards shook with the impact.

“There’s still the little matter,” she said with a predatory smile, “of you stalking through that door, yelling at me, calling me all sorts of ugly names.”

“I-you…” Gariel wiped a hand across his face, smearing rather than removing the blood that now dribbled from his nose. “People are watching, Liliana.”

“That didn’t bother you when you were shouting obscenities at me.” Gariel could only gape once more, at the gathered audience and at the injured bandits, and wonder exactly how crazy his friend’s girl actually was. He’d actually opened his mouth to ask such a question-only to choke on a spray of splinters as a bolt that appeared roughly as thick as a tree trunk slammed into the floor mere inches from his head.

Liliana heard the whir-and-click of a mechanized crossbow even as she jerked away from the sudden impact, glaring at the figures standing in the doorway. There were three more, all strongly resembling the pair who had attacked her moments ago. Only these three, Liliana realized as she stared at a trio of self-loading identical weapons, were far better equipped.

“The next one,” the man in the middle told her gruffly, “goes through his head.”

His gaze flickered to the two figures on the floor, one breathing his last, one blinded, and his face hardened.

“I don’t think you’re fast enough to stop all three of us, witch.”

She scowled in turn.

“So shoot him. He means nothing to me, and even with those fancy crossbows, I promise you’ll not have time to reload.”

“Ah,” the man said, voice oily, “but he means something to someone, don’t he?” Liliana’s scowl grew deeper still-but her shoulders slumped, and she knew that they saw it.

“What do you want?”

“What I want is to put a few shafts through you for what you did to my boys,” the bandit told her. “But what’s going to happen is this…”