“You shouldn’t have come here, Jalan.” Maeres spoke into the silence of my horror. “It’s unfortunate that you can’t unsee my poppies, but the world is full of misfortunes.” He stepped back to stand by Daveet at the door—the lights flickering across his face providing the only animation, a shadow smile there and gone, there and gone.
“No!” For the first time ever I wanted Maeres Allus not to leave. Anything was better than being abandoned to Cutter John. “No! I won’t talk! I won’t. Not ever.” I put some anger into it—who would believe a sobbing promise of strength? “I’m saying nothing!” I strained at my ropes, rocking the table back against its legs. “Pull my nails. I won’t talk. Hot pincers won’t drag it from me.”
“How about cold ones?” Cutter John raised the short-handled iron pincers he’d been holding all this time in his other hand.
I roared at them then, thrashing, useless in the ropes. If one of Maeres’s men hadn’t been standing on the table legs, it would have tipped forwards and I’d have gone face first into the flagstones, which bad as it sounds would have been far less painful than what Cutter John had in mind for me. I was still roaring and screaming, working my way rapidly towards sobbing and pleading, when a hot wet something splattered across my face. It was enough to make me unscrew my eyes and pause my bellowing. Although I’d stopped yelling the din was no less deafening, only now it wasn’t me screaming. I’d drowned out the crash of the door bursting open, too far gone in my terror to notice it. Only Daveet stood there now, framed in the doorway. He turned as I watched, slit from collarbone to hip, spilling coils of his guts to the floor. To the left a large figure moved at the edge of my vision. As I turned my head the action shifted behind the table; another scream and a pale arm wrapped in bracelets made from men’s lips landed on the flagstones about a foot from where Daveet’s head hit the stone when he tripped on his intestines. And in one moment there was silence. Not a sound save for men shouting far down the corridor outside, echoey in the distance. Daveet appeared to have knocked himself out or died from sudden blood loss. If Cutter John missed his arm, he wasn’t complaining. I could see one more of Maeres’s men lying dead. The others might be dead behind me or taking a leaf from my book and sprinting for the hills. If I hadn’t been tied to the damn table I would have been overtaking them on the way to the aforementioned hills myself.
Snorri ver Snagason stepped into view. “You!” he said.
The hooded robe he’d been wearing when I ran into him was half-torn from his shoulders; blood splattered his chest and arms and dripped from the scarlet sword in his fist. More of the stuff ran down his face from a shallow cut on his forehead. It wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for a demon risen from hell. In fact, in the flickering light, blood-clad and with battle in his eyes, it was quite hard not to.
“You?” The eloquence Snorri had demonstrated in Grandmother’s throne room had wholly abandoned him.
He reached for me, and I shrank back, but not far because that fucking table was in the way. As that big hand came close, I felt a tingle on my cheekbones, my lips, forehead, like pins and needles, a kind of pressure building. He felt it too—I saw his eyes widen. The direction that had led me, the destination that had drawn me on . . . it was him. The same force had led Snorri here and set him amongst Maeres’s men. We both recognized it now.
The Norseman slowed his hand, fingers an inch or two from my neck. The skin there buzzed, almost crackling with . . . something. He stopped, not wanting to find out what would happen if he touched me skin to skin. The hand withdrew, returned full of knife, and before I could squeal he set to cutting my bonds.
“You’re coming with me. We can sort this out somewhere else.”
Abandoning me amongst loops of sliced rope, Snorri returned to the doorway, pausing only to stamp on someone’s neck. Not Maeres’s, unfortunately. He ducked his head through, pulling back immediately, a quick bobbing motion. Something hissed past the entrance, several somethings.
“Crossbows.” Snorri spat on Daveet’s corpse. “I hate bowmen.” A glance back at me. “Grab a sword.”
“A sword?” The man clearly thought he was still in the wilds amongst the overly hairy folk of the North. I cast my eye across the carnage, looking behind the table. Cutter John lay sprawled, the stump of his arm barely pulsing, an ugly wound on his forehead. No sign of Maeres. I couldn’t imagine how he’d escaped.
None of them had any weapon more offensive than a six-inch knife; carrying anything larger within the city walls just wasn’t worth the trouble from town-laws. I took the dagger and kicked Cutter John in the head a few times. It really hurt my toes, but I felt it a price worth paying.