‘We stick to the larger streets,’ Rate decided. ‘Safer, that way. The house is a good one, people should know it if we ask around.’
But the first person they asked, a well-dressed man with a servant following him, did not know it. Nor did the next, a pair of stout middle-aged women on their way home from a market. Nor a messenger boy dawdling on his errand to make eyes at the women as they passed. Nor a beggar, who spoke neither Immish nor Pernish and simply grinned at them. The streets began to get more dilapidated and uncomfortable, the people harsher faced and tiredeyed. They tried to get back onto wider streets, but whichever way they went their surroundings seemed ever poorer and more threatening. A rich city. A very rich city. But even very rich cities have places it is dangerous to go. No, thought Marith, not even. It is because it is a very rich city that it has places it is dangerous to go. Here in this city built on dying, where life and death are sacred to their god. If they stop killing, the sun will cease to rise.
Three men came towards them. They outnumbered them. There were other people about, it was still almost daylight. But the men were large, and armed with swords. Rate drew a sharp breath, his hand going to his knife. The street seemed to empty. The men looked at each other, then at the four of them. Angry, hungry eyes.
The largest of the three went straight for Marith. He had a short, fat sword, ugly and ill-made. Swung it fiercely, not with any skill but with strength and need behind it. Marith stepped backwards. Almost knocked into Rate. He drew his knife, which looked stupid beside the sword. Left their swords at the Five Corners. Only murderers carried swords, in Sorlost. Those of them that even had swords, after the dragon. They were supposed to be buying replacements tomorrow. The man sliced at him so that he had to jerk away and found himself up against a wall. There was a chance he might actually die. The absurdity of it struck him as almost funny.
The big man lashed out again. Marith couldn’t get in close enough to use his knife for anything more than parrying the worst of the sword thrusts. One solid strike and it would be knocked from his hand. The sword came dangerously close to his face and he couldn’t parry it, twisted sideways, kicked out hard. A gratifying grunt of pain. He felt the sword crash into the stone beside him. Pain blossoming in his shoulder. Swung his arm up to block the sword’s next stroke, the blade clashing on his knife with a force that made his body jolt. Kicked again, catching his opponent on the right kneecap. The man’s leg buckled and he was momentarily unbalanced. Marith managed to get his knife in close and draw blood from a flesh wound to the left arm before the sword was against him again and he had to move back. More pain, sharp and sweet at his hip, the sound of cloth ripping.
He’d killed a dragon. He’d killed … But he’d never fought another man to the death before. Not like this. Not his life against another’s, hacking away at each other, everything stripped down to this one thing between them, absolutely certain, dry and solid as boiled bone. The one thing that wasn’t an illusion. The one thing that was real. Warm pleasure spread through him deliciously. Bright as stars. Why hadn’t they told him? He’d spent so long running from things. Help me. Help me, Carin. Help me blot it out … What a fool! He’d kill this man, and kill him slowly, and feel his life leaving him. He must have been happy, sometimes, this man who would die before him under his knife. Must have looked at something once and thought ‘this is a good thing’. Must have loved and wanted and desired and hoped. And all of that he’d take from him, like it had never been.
There was a howl from somewhere to his right, then a horrible choking, roaring sound. His opponent kicked him back and his head spun with pain. The sword swung at him. Ducked under it, the blade missing him by a breath, threw himself forwards, inside the reach of it, lashing with his knife and his fist. His opponent’s breath stank, sweet and rotten. Their faces so close Marith could see the network of red blood vessels in the man’s staring eyes, the sluggish blink of his pupils as the knife blade bit home. Die. Just die. Just die. Kicked again and stabbed again, brought his left hand up and struck the heavy, sweaty face. Not a hard blow, but enough with the wound to the gut to send the man stumbling back. The sword clattered to the ground. Hollow sound as it hit the flagstones, like a new-shod horse. His opponent bent over, clutching his stomach, bleeding. Crying. Marith drove his knife into the man’s neck, aiming for the great artery where the heart blood came. The blade slipped down, sticky with blood, leaving a gaping slash like the opened belly of a fish.
Break him. Crush him. Kill him. Kill! Kill! The man crashed to the ground. Marith kicked him in the wound in his stomach. Blood and air bubbled from the wound in his neck. His scream sounded as though it was underwater. Marith kicked him again. The body convulsed, alcohol vomit oozing from between its lips. Some of it seemed to be leaking out of the wound in its neck. Break it! Kill it! Kill! Kill! Marith kicked it a third time in the gut, then in the face, grinding his heel down where the bloodshot eyes stared up blind and frantic, suffocating in the warm afternoon air. A crunch of bone and blood as he pressed down. Break it! Kill it! Shatter its skull! Harder. Oh, harder! Break it beyond death! Kill! Kill! Kill!
‘That’s enough! Marith!’
He spun round, knife out. Rate, Alxine and Emit standing staring at him.
‘He’s dead! He’s dead, Marith! Stop!’ Alxine put his hand on Marith’s shoulder. ‘Stop.’
Rate’s arm was bleeding and Alxine had nasty red marks on his cheeks. The two men they’d been fighting had disappeared.
‘You killed them?’ Marith asked slowly.
‘They ran off once Emit stabbed one in the shoulder. They were just louts looking for money, Marith. You probably didn’t need to do … that.’
Looked down at the body on the ground before him, spilling guts and blood and puke and piss. One hand frozen reaching for the sword. So near it, only a few finger widths away. It looked much smaller, now, almost like a child. Shrunk down.
He’d done that. He’d taken something alive and made it dead.
Bright as stars. Sweet as sunlight.
Oh gods, Carin, help me …
‘He was trying to kill me,’ he said.