Saladin Ahmed - Throne of the Crescent Moon

Behind him, the shop door slammed shut, rattling the bottles on shelf and table. Even before he turned, Raseed sensed the presence of other men. He spun around and saw three rough-looking figures fill the other end of the room.

A small man with a face like a rat’s brandished a long knife. He was flanked by a burly man with one eye wearing a brass punching glove and a tall red river Soo with a fighting staff. “Ahh, God’s peace again, Doctor Z!” the rat-faced man said. “You know why we—eh? Who’s this fool?”

The shopkeeper spoke in frightened tones. “Damned-by-God extorters! This is the second time this month they’ve come for my goods. Please, Master Dervish, help me!”

Raseed felt uncertainty fly mercifully from his heart. This was thievery, and he knew what he had to do. He drew himself up and faced the trio. “If you are here to take that which God has not given you, this will not go well for you. I suggest you leave now, wicked ones.”

The one-eyed man spoke, his voice like a blacksmith’s bellows. “ ‘Master Dervish,’ huh? Look, we got no bones to pick with the Order, boy. This business is between this greedy son-of-a-whore and our Prince. So why don’t you just make your scrawny ass scarce before we grown men have to spank it, eh?”

The Soo man spit once, smiled, and thumped the steel tip of his staff against the stone floor.

At last, something that makes sense again. A clear path of action. “Defend yourselves,” Raseed said softly.

Then he leapt.

There was too little room in the confines of the small shop to draw his sword. Instead, Raseed lunged at the rat-faced man first, palm-punching him in the face and breaking his nose. In the same motion, he grabbed the man by his throat and tossed him at the one-eyed man, sending both of them down in a heap.

Raseed spun just in time to dodge a staff-blow from the third thug, who was having a hard time wielding his weapon in such tight quarters. With a chop of his hand, Raseed split the astonished man’s staff in two, then sent him flying into the wall with a spinning kick.

One-eye was back on his feet now, and he stood back warily, looking for an opening. The man threw out a punch but found only air. Raseed drove his elbow up, shattering the man’s jaw, and he collapsed.

Rat-face, who was still on the ground nursing his broken nose, tried to stab Raseed’s leg. Raseed snaked back and stomped on the man’s wrist, which broke with a satisfying crunch. The little man dropped his knife and curled into a ball, whimpering in half conscious pain.

The Soo threw his staff halves at Raseed, yanked the shop door open, and ran. Raseed started to pursue, but first turned back to make sure the shopkeeper was safe.

The man’s mouth hung open, a gratifying look of awe on his flushed face. “Oh, thank you, Master Dervish, thank you! And God’s blessings upon you! Those thugs were—”

Raseed heard a noise. Without warning, his feet were swept out from beneath him. He fell hard onto his back, the wind knocked out of him. Above him a light flashed in his eyes, and he felt suddenly nauseated and disoriented.

Sorcery of some sort. These villains had accomplices outside the shop, he realized and cursed himself for being ambushed so easily by common criminals.

He fought past the sickness in his stomach and the after-light still dancing in his vision and started to rise to his feet.

And suddenly a sword was at his throat.

Raseed looked up past the light motes swirling in his eyes to see the suede- and silk-clad Falcon Prince, holding a small mirror in one hand and a saber in another. The edge of the blade grazed Raseed’s neck.

“We meet again, friend of Adoulla Makhslood! And you’ve damn near killed two of my men!”

Raseed said nothing, but waited for his dizziness to fade and watched for a moment’s inattention in order to knock away the thief’s blade.

“Boys!” the impossibly tall bandit said to his men, his eyes and his sword alike still glued to Raseed. “No shame in getting whipped by this one—he fights as well as any man I’ve ever seen, save perhaps myself. But stop your groaning and moaning. Grab that jar of blue powder there and get out of here! A thousand apologies, O noble shopkeeper, but we must, in the name of the good people of Dhamsawaat, confiscate your supply of nightpetal essence. Worry not, though—I swear to you in God’s name that it will find a loving home in the hands of my master alkhemist, who will make good use of it.”

Thievery, mockery, and vain Name-taking all in one swoop of his tongue! It was disgusting, and Raseed’s blood burned at not being able to do anything to stop it.

“Oh, come now,” Pharaad Az Hammaz said, speaking again to Raseed as his men made their escape. “Don’t look so upset, young man. You’re only on your back now because I resorted to dirty tricks. When I saw how well you fought, I wasn’t about to take a chance on face-to-face foolishness. I had to use all my stealth and my very last dazzle-glass.” He tossed the small mirror to the stone floor, where it shattered.

“Your sight and stomach will return to normal in an hour’s time. Just lay there for a moment and catch your breath. As for me, well, I must be elsewhere. But perhaps our paths will cross again.” The bandit backed away and toward the shop door quickly, keeping his sword pointed in Raseed’s direction until he was out the door and out of sight.

The moment the sword edge left his throat, Raseed tried to stand. He was still disoriented from the effects of the thief’s magic mirror and, as he came to his feet, he barely managed to keep himself from being sick.

An hour to recover, the bandit had said, and Raseed did not doubt that was the case for normal men. But Raseed was a weapon of God, not some hapless watchman. Ignoring the whimpers of the still-shocked shopkeeper, he forced himself to take step after step and moved, as fast as he could, out the green-painted door and after the bandit.

Stepping out onto the street Raseed scanned the crowd and saw a knot of gawkers staring and pointing at the side of a townhouse. There he saw Pharaad Az Hammaz climbing to the building’s roof, obviously aided by the same remarkable leaping magic he’d used after thwarting the execution in Inspector’s Square.

Shoving his way through the crowd, Raseed grit his teeth against his rioting stomach, took a few soul-focusing breaths, and leapt up to a second story window box. His feet and fingers found holds in the wood latticework of the building’s window-screens, and he climbed as quickly as he could. For a moment his head swam in dizziness, and he thought he would fall. But he called on all the strength he had, kept climbing, and finally hoisted himself over the edge of the rooftop.

He stood and, on the other side of the flat roof, saw the Falcon Prince, his brawny arms crossed and an impudent grin on his moustachioed face.

Raseed drew his sword.

“ Most impressive, young man!” the bandit boomed. “God’s balls, I’ve never seen a man recover from the dazzle-glass’s magic so swiftly!” Suddenly the man’s saber was in his hand.

Despite his dizziness, Raseed sped at the thief, swinging his sword. Pharaad Az Hammaz parried one blow, then another, and another.

Steel sang out loudly each time their weapons met, and with the impact of each blow Raseed thought he would vomit. But he grit his teeth and fought on, pressing the attack, looking for an opening in the thief’s defenses.

There was none. The Falcon Prince was sweating now, but the smile never left his face. “Do you know, I think you might have had my head by now, if you weren’t still sick and dizzy,” he shouted. “But you are. And so—”

The bandit darted back, dodging yet another of Raseed’s blows. Then, with a speed Raseed would have thought impossible, Pharaad Az Hammaz kicked a booted foot into Raseed’s midsection. Raseed fell backwards, his stomach emptying, and his sword flying from his hand.