Night, 48th Roalis, 2719
Voedale, Old Rose Harbor
Voedale, Old Rose Harbor
There was a storm, Aremu thought, in the Rose as well, and it lived in Niccolette Ibutatu.
Blood was streaming from the Bastian’s nose; she was kneeling, hands and knees pressed to the damp, dirty floor, her head bent forward, dark hair tumbling over her shoulders. Aremu heard her sniffle, but it did not seem to do much for the bright red soaking the handkerchief she held to her nose.
The imbala stood with his pistol pointed at the last of the assailants, the wick – a small, wiry man, Anaxi or Bastian by the look of him, with dark hair and small, nervous features, twitching anxiously. His three companions – and one of theirs – lay scattered around them on the floor of the small back room; one of them was still rattling his last breaths, and even Aremu could feel the remnants of the living mona in the air, thick and heavy. The wick held a key clenched tightly in one hand, and his gaze darted from Aremu and Niccolette to the enormous locked chest welded to the wall, and back again.
“Ne,” The wick spat. “Ne, I ent givin’ it t’ ye – gods damn Hawke, and gods damn all ye!” His hand jerked – Aremu’s tensed on the pistol – and then he was running, sprinting all out towards the open door, his hand clapping to his mouth. Aremu saw the jerk of his throat as he swallowed – he fired, once – the bullet went wide – and the wick scrambled through the door and away.
“Go!” Niccolette spat. She was still shaking, rocking lightly back and forth.
Aremu gritted his teeth, glancing down at her once more, then tightened his grip on the pistol and took off after the wick. Through the opening – straight down the passage to where the door to the street was swinging shut. Aremu hurled himself at it, caught it with his right shoulder with an ache that thumped through him, and burst out onto the sandy street. The wind was whistling through the night, catching at the lines of his coat, whisking sand up off the ground and swirling it around, and the dark, looming thunderstorm seemed to have grown a good deal closer; a distant boom of thunder cracked through the night.
It did not help much, Aremu thought, to know that an ambush was coming when one did nothing to prepare for it. Hawke had been clear – he had not expected the dues owed him to be paid without a fight. It did not help much to walk knowingly into disaster – to bare one’s neck to the blade that was expected, rather than the one which was hidden, would lead to a cut throat all the same.
Now Carter was dead – Aremu had rather liked him, a big man with hands like shovels and an oddly high voice, soft and lisping; he’d rarely spoken, and when he had the words always seemed to get lost somewhere between his chest and his mouth, as if his throat kept them for his own. Niccolette had had no patience for him, but all the same Aremu had seen her face when he dropped, and he knew she had felt it. Perhaps, he thought, more than she had wanted to. She had not killed Carter by her own hand, and yet it was not so clear to Aremu that she was not responsible; it was not so clear to Aremu that he, himself, was not responsible.
The imbala ran harder, his pistol clutched in his left hand and his right arm lightly bent, the empty sleeve at his wrist pinned down against itself.
There was a faint sharp scent in the air, carried distantly off the wind, and the first stinging rain lashed at Aremu’s face, the bare skin of his head. He was gaining on the wick; the man glanced back over his shoulder and his eyes widened at the sight of Aremu closing on him, wide flashes of white fear in his face. He glanced forward again – glanced around – and then he lunged, sideways, scrabbling against the ground, and caught hold of a man who’d been half in the shadows – jerked himself behind the man.
“Ne move, kov,” the wick spat, one fist clutching tightly at the man’s clothing, breathing hard enough to send shudders through his whole body. The other had found a knife, somewhere, and it was digging into his unwilling hostage’s back, gently. He didn’t spare more than a glance for his hostage, his gaze fixed on Aremu.
Aremu took a step closer, then another, moving easily across the uneven ground. “Where do you think you can go?” He asked, softly, in the lilting tones of a Mugrobi accent. Four shots left, he thought, although his gaze did not drop to the pistol in his hand. He lifted it, slowly, and the wick ducked his head down, not more than an inch or two taller than the unlucky hostage he’d chosen.
