The Blacktongue Thief

63 Lightning in the Dark

The crab, black and spiny, hard to see in the cave’s gloom though now grown to the size of a dog, poked my face with a pincer, just missing my eye, and scuttled from the wall to the floor. I leapt back and drew Angna, my rondel dagger, meaning to punch the rotten thing right through its middle, but it crawled, fast, straight for Norrigal.

Understandably alarmed by the sight of the leggy, spiny black thing rushing at her, my crippled witchlet pointed her ring-thumb and loosed a bright, hot bolt of lightning, which hit the book-crab and burned it to cinders. Temporarily blinded by the bolt, I ran to stand in front of Norrigal as the Spanths shielded their queen near the far wall.

Bastard of a ring, that. Norrigal yipped now as the glowing circle of metal burned her, she peeled it off her thumb and threw it to the ground, where it smoked and dissolved into nothing. As my sight returned:

“By Cassa’s holy squinny,” I said, trying to understand what had just happened.

Norrigal blinked, also trying to get her sight back.

“Are you well, Kinch?” she said, at not much above a whisper in the stunned, wary silence of the cave.

“Yah,” I told her, then said, “Ow!” at a hot pain in my arm. I jerked up my sleeve, which was spotted with blood.

“Oh no,” I said, realizing what must be happening. My tattoo was gone.

“Rao,” said the blind, gray tabby, Bully Boy, stalking in a figure eight on the floor.

Of course, he wasn’t alone.

I saw her eyes first. My Assassin-Adept. Sesta. Her arms, tattooed black from shoulders to fingertips, flashed and then she struck me in the head with one of those arms, knocking me aside like driftwood. The pain was blinding, the blow sharper than a hand should have been. I saw now a sigil glowing coal-like on one of her black shoulders that said Iron and I understood. Arms of Iron. Not a spell she could burn for long, but while it went, her arms and hands were as hard and strong as bars of iron. I sheathed the rondel, reached for my bow, nocked an arrow.

The Spanth warriors crossed the cave fast as blinking.

The adept blocked a sword blow from Yorbez with an arm, making sparks as she did, then her black lower lip glowed and she spat into Galva’s eyes, which smoked. Like a spitting cobra from the hot hills of Urrimad, the killer had blinded her!

She kicked Yorbez’s leg out from under her, then I saw a sigil on her leg that said Up. Before I even thought about it, I shot my bow over her head, my heart glowing warm with the spark of coming good fortune. My luck was in. She leapt for the far wall almost too fast to see, meaning, I think, to kill the queen with her arms of hard iron.

She didn’t get to.

My arrow stuck that bitch like a quail.

In the kidney and out the liver.

She jerked in midair, skewing her trajectory so she thumped into the wall and fell. To her credit, she didn’t let herself groan. Yorbez got to her in two steps and stabbed her through the heart. Blood came out of her mouth as she grinned. She moved her hand up to her chest. The hands of the clock now seemed to stick out of her flesh. She reached for it. A sigil that had been invisible before it lit up glowed, reading, Go Back.

“Moch!” I yelled.

“Shyte!” Norrigal said in Holtish, as if translating. “Don’t let her!”

Yorbez deftly withdrew her sword, getting a spray of heart’s blood on her for her trouble, then cut at the assassin’s hand to stop her touching the clock. Yorbez’s sword broke on the assassin’s iron arm. The killer coughed one more gout of blood and jerked the clock-hand.