He wore the same stiffened leather armor that the others did, studded with metal stars, and looked confident as he didn’t point his blade straight at me, but held it low and in front of his body as he crouched.
“You have no idea how much trouble I’ve already gone through to get that map, girly…” the man hissed. “Now—you can either do the sensible thing and drop it—or you can be dumb. And this accursed place doesn’t look to me like it rewards stupidity.” He jerked his head behind him, to where the howls of the sandstorm proved his point.
“This accursed place…” I sneered back, raising the cudgel to match him, “…is my home.”
My attacker paused for a moment, then shrugged. “Fine,” he said, and almost before the word had left his mouth, he leapt forward in a quick overhead sweep—
Stars! The man was fast! I barely had time to bring the cudgel up in an overhead block before it fell, with a solid shudder that reverberated through my arm as the sabre bit wood. I pushed out with my weapon, hoping to open his guard—but the man simply stepped forward and barged me heavily across the chest with his other shoulder, sending me sprawling to the floor.
“Ugh!” I grunted more in surprise than pain (and for a moment, I was very thankful that opulent Abioye had decided to bring with him his thick rugs and blankets). But my new position allowed me to see the thin fingers of fire that were even now running up the inside wall of the tent.
The man lowered his sabre down at me. “The map,” he said seriously. “I won’t ask a second time—”
He was busy saying these words, trying to scare me, as I swung my foot upwards, stamping at my attacker just beside his knee and bringing the man down to the blanketed floor with a heavy thump and a muttered curse. I was scrabbling to my feet at the same time as he was, and I was already sweeping out with my cudgel as he flicked his sabre one-handed at me—
“Ach!” I felt a sting of pain shoot up the outside of my hand and I reflexively dropped the cudgel. When I looked down, I could see my own blood already welling on the curving cut—as fine as a hair—halfway between my wrist and the bottom of my little finger.
“Little Sister!” Ymmen boomed through my mind, as he must have felt my pain and shock.
But I had no time to calm the great dragon that I was alright. I felt a painful jab in my chest to see that the black-and-silver haired man was already rising to his full height in front of me and had prodded me with the tip of his sabre.
Well, I guess at least he didn’t run me through, a part of me thought as I growled at him.
“You’re done,” he said in curiously formal way, reminding me a little of the way that Inyene’s Overseers would casually order us about. He held his sabre pointed into my chest and reached out to snatch at the map that was still in my other hand.
“No!” My grip tightened, and his eyes flickered to mine as we both must have been thinking the exact same thing: Was I willing to die for this?
However, it seemed that now was not the time to answer that question, as a dragon’s claw ripped through the flaming tent with a blast of superheated air and sand.
“Narissea!” someone shouted over the scream of the wind—and the muffled screams that must’ve come from what was left of the members of our expedition.
It was Abioye. And the dragon that he was riding wasn’t Ymmen—it was the mechanical dragon that Inyene had insisted that Abioye take with him, even though it was getting harder and harder for him to control it the farther into the Plains and away from Inyene’s Staff that we traveled.
The claws of the dragon were giant blades of steel, bolted onto the bronze clockwork mechanism of its knuckles. It ripped through the tent fabric easily, not bothered at all by the flames that engulfed it. And there, behind its paw and arm that were clad in mismatched, old and cracked scales—Stolen scales—was Abioye’s pale face, peering from inside the hood of his heavy storm cloak. His expression was twisted in concentration and anxiety as he pulled at the thing’s levers at the front of his seat.
“Holy Mountain!” the man before me gasped, jumping back from the incursion—
But the man still held on to one end of the map, and I wasn’t about to let go of the other.
The Lady Artifex’s map was inked onto heavy vellum, but it was also ancient vellum. It’s concertina page-folds had worn over the years to a feather-thin, almost see-through line… And the map ripped down the center fold, as easily as parting butter.
No! I gasped, but I was already tottering backwards, as was the man who had attacked me.
“Leave her be!” Abioye shouted—but whatever rescue attempt he had been planning—as if I needed to be rescued at all— went awry. Abioye pulled on the levers, and the dragon’s paw shot upwards into the roof of the tent, splintering the wooden pole with ease and continuing to rise as I caught the command tent’s fabric, and pulled.
I snatched forward for the man, but suddenly there were heavy folds of tent falling all around me, hitting me solidly across the back and driving me to my knees.
Abioye, you idiot! I could have screamed, were it not for the fact that I was coughing on sand and dust and trying to heave the heavy fabric from me.
At least my enemy must have been captured by the collapsing tent, I thought as I managed to worm my way to a part that was a little higher than my head—the tent poles must have been caught against those ridiculous side tables.
“Narissea!” Abioye’s muffled voice found me, but this little cubbyhole was pitch-black—I had no idea which way was out, and it was starting to smell like smoke from the smoldering canvas all around.
The map! The map! I did my best to stuff my torn half of the map into my jerkin before reaching out with my hands to try and find any way forward. I felt the heavy weave of blankets, the hardened wooden edge of a chest, and then more coarse canvas fabric. It was warm to the touch—did that mean that the other side was on fire?
I’m not going to die down here like a squashed bug! I thought, crawling along the line of tent with one hand on the canvas ‘wall’ and the other holding my tunic—and the precious map that it contained— to my chest.
There was a breath of not-so-fresh air ahead of me. Well, fresher than the smoke under the canvas, but still laden with grit that made my mouth feel dry and scratchy. I crawled towards it, hand over hand—
Just as a burst of sand-laden air hit my face as the tent was pulled aside, and strong arms grabbed me by the shoulders.
“Get off me!” was what I wanted to scream, but the sand and dust in my mouth made me instead cough and choke, and shout something like “Ger-ough-agh!”
“It’s alright, it’s me, Narissea. It’s Abioye,” I heard the man say, as his strong arms folded around me and lifted me up. He folded the wide edge of his cloak over me, hugging me to his side as we stumbled through the storm.
“Abioye…the map…the others…” I gasped, suddenly riven with shame at losing half the map and the bloodshed that was happening all around.
“I don’t care about that right now!” I heard him hiss against the storm. “I came back for you, Narissea—not the map!” And despite who he was, and what terrors we were going through this night, I felt relief as I sank against his broad chest, to let myself be guided across the soot-laden sands.