Greg Keyes - Lord of Souls

Most traps are simple.

He sighed, ran his hand through his hair, felt the breeze on his face.

He heard a faint noise that seemed somehow out of place and opened his eyes.

Fifteen yards away he saw the shadowed figure of a man, dressed in the black quilted jerkin so many of the Dark Brotherhood affected these days. The fellow was in profile, kneeling on the roof of the building across the alley. As Colin watched, he slipped like a spider down a rope too dark and thin to make out from his vantage point. He settled, still like a spider, on the casement of Arese’s window. After a moment Colin saw the window reflect starlight as it swung open, and then, a few heartbeats later, shut again.

The breeze picked up. It felt cool, and Colin realized he was sweating.

Someone wanted Arese dead.

He hesitated long enough to feel ashamed, trying to sort out what the smart thing to do was. If she died, he could step out of this whole thing.

But then he would never know what was going on, and maybe he would have to watch the Empire collapse knowing he might have done something.

But it was more than that. There had been something about her, brittleness, vulnerability…

He recognized her, he understood in that moment. She was what he might become after a few years of this. He had seen, however briefly, the hollow place in her, the weariness. He still wasn’t sure if he believed her or if they were on the same side.

But he didn’t want her to die.

He looked back up at the sky. Almost time for her to come home, of course. The assassin would know that, too, wouldn’t he?

He didn’t have any rope or cord. He could make the jump to the window, maybe, but the odds were against it, and it wouldn’t be quiet. But he could jump to the next building, get to her front door before she did, and avoid the whole confrontation.

But then he saw light in the window-not in the room itself, but diffuse light, coming from another room.

Muttering a curse, he stepped back a few paces, assessed the distance, and leapt.

His toes hit the window ledge and he curled forward, elbows over his eyes. Glass panes shattered but the wooden frame did not, and so he bounced back, spine toward the street thirty feet below. He kicked a foot through one of the broken panes and managed to hook it on the wood, which swung him back and smacked his shoulders into the brick. Gasping, he jerked up, tightening his stomach muscles, and drew himself up to the window.

By the time he got it open, of course, someone was coming for him.

He dove past and to the side of the dark blur and rolled toward the lantern-lit room farther in, drawing his knife. He absently noticed that his hands were slick with blood.

A knife thudded into the floor next to him as he scrambled up, and the assassin was close behind; he had a dark blade in his left hand and was drawing a bright one with his right from beneath his jerkin. Colin’s breath rushed in, and for an instant everything slowed and golden light seemed to infuse the room. His arms moved but he seemed outside of it. The next thing he knew, he hit the wall hard, pain trying to make him scream as he fell, but his throat wouldn’t open to let it out.

His attacker was leaning against a bookcase across the room. He made a sort of snarling sound and took one, two steps toward him. With the third step his knee kept bending and he slammed face-first into the floor. Colin could see the bloody point of his knife standing out between the downed man’s shoulder blades.

Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling them wobble beneath him. Under his breath he said a little prayer to Dibella, but he couldn’t tell if she heard. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand. He made it to the fallen man, though, and took the black knife from his hand. He stuck it in between the first two vertebrae below the skull and wiggled it. Then he had a look at himself.

His arms were cut up from the window, nothing so deep as to be dangerous. The assassin’s other knife had driven through the pectoral muscle where it stretched up to meet his shoulder. The feeling of the impact came back to him, and he realized the blade must have hit a bone and skipped up instead of slipping through to his heart. In any event, if the dagger hadn’t been poisoned, he was probably going to survive.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a second man, coming from the direction of the window, and he tried to turn, far too slowly.

But there was a clap like thunder, and the man went staggering back, and in the next instant something appeared, something horrible. Colin had a glimpse of slits of green balefire, scales, and claws like sickles. The man almost managed to scream before his lungs and viscera were spattered across the room. Then the thing turned on Colin, snarling.

“Stop!” a voice shouted, and the daedra stopped, panting.

Arese stood behind him, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them. It made her look very young. The sleeve of her white shirt was soaked in blood, and a red patch on her temple and eye would probably soon prove itself a bruise.

“Hunt and guard,” she told the daedra, and it turned and reluctantly slouched back toward the window.

“How did you-” Arese managed. She was breathing so hard and shallowly it worried him.

“Come here,” he said. “Are you cut anyplace else?”

“I never saw him,” she said, staring down at the body. “Never heard him. I didn’t have time to do anything.”

“Let me look,” he said. “You got your arm up,” he remarked, examining the defensive wound on her wrist. It wasn’t deep.

“I heard a crash, like glass breaking. I guess I threw up my hand when I turned, but he was there already.”

“The crash was me,” Colin said, searching for punctures anywhere vital.

“I don’t understand.”

“I was waiting on the roof across the alley. I saw him come in.”

“He came to kill me.” Her breath was still too quick, and her skin was hot, much hotter than it should be.

“That seems obvious,” he said.

“They would have killed me if not for you.”

“Well, that second guy would have had me,” he said.

“Divines, you’re bleeding everywhere.”

“Nothing serious,” he said. “But speaking of bleeding, your arm-”

She looked at it, then back at him. He realized he had one hand on her shoulder and another on her stomach. He felt her belly quiver, and something happened to her eyes.

Stupid, he thought. This is stupid.

Her skin felt almost molten. She gasped when their lips came together, as if trying to get the air from his lungs. He smelled something like burning cloves and felt a shock of energy race through him like nothing he had ever known before, filling the emptiness left in him from two hard fights with impossible strength. She buried her face in his neck and he in hers, and they went down on the rug in a tangle, both wrestling furiously at ties and buttons.

Slick with blood, the salt from their sweat burned his wounds, but not enough to matter.

Later, much later it seemed, he lay back while she cleaned his wounds, first with warm water and then with a white ointment that left a pleasant warmth behind it and smelled a little like mustard. It did more than feel good; he could see the flesh draw together almost as if stitched. They had moved to her bedroom, where she had laid out a thick cover over her sheets and let him rest stretched out. She sat on the edge of the bed, the skin of her throat and breast like pearl in the moonlight-except for where the streaks of dried blood still clung. “Feel better?” she asked.

“Much,” he said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t feel it that much a little while ago either.”

She looked down. He thought she seemed embarrassed.