A knife thudded into the floor next to him as he scrambled up, and the assassin was close behind; he had a dark blade in his left hand and was drawing a bright one with his right from beneath his jerkin. Colin’s breath rushed in, and for an instant everything slowed and golden light seemed to infuse the room. His arms moved but he seemed outside of it. The next thing he knew, he hit the wall hard, pain trying to make him scream as he fell, but his throat wouldn’t open to let it out.
His attacker was leaning against a bookcase across the room. He made a sort of snarling sound and took one, two steps toward him. With the third step his knee kept bending and he slammed face-first into the floor. Colin could see the bloody point of his knife standing out between the downed man’s shoulder blades.
Groaning, he pushed himself to his feet, feeling them wobble beneath him. Under his breath he said a little prayer to Dibella, but he couldn’t tell if she heard. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand. He made it to the fallen man, though, and took the black knife from his hand. He stuck it in between the first two vertebrae below the skull and wiggled it. Then he had a look at himself.
His arms were cut up from the window, nothing so deep as to be dangerous. The assassin’s other knife had driven through the pectoral muscle where it stretched up to meet his shoulder. The feeling of the impact came back to him, and he realized the blade must have hit a bone and skipped up instead of slipping through to his heart. In any event, if the dagger hadn’t been poisoned, he was probably going to survive.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw a second man, coming from the direction of the window, and he tried to turn, far too slowly.
But there was a clap like thunder, and the man went staggering back, and in the next instant something appeared, something horrible. Colin had a glimpse of slits of green balefire, scales, and claws like sickles. The man almost managed to scream before his lungs and viscera were spattered across the room. Then the thing turned on Colin, snarling.
“Stop!” a voice shouted, and the daedra stopped, panting.
Arese stood behind him, her eyes wider than he had ever seen them. It made her look very young. The sleeve of her white shirt was soaked in blood, and a red patch on her temple and eye would probably soon prove itself a bruise.
“Hunt and guard,” she told the daedra, and it turned and reluctantly slouched back toward the window.
“How did you-” Arese managed. She was breathing so hard and shallowly it worried him.
“Come here,” he said. “Are you cut anyplace else?”
“I never saw him,” she said, staring down at the body. “Never heard him. I didn’t have time to do anything.”
“Let me look,” he said. “You got your arm up,” he remarked, examining the defensive wound on her wrist. It wasn’t deep.
“I heard a crash, like glass breaking. I guess I threw up my hand when I turned, but he was there already.”
“The crash was me,” Colin said, searching for punctures anywhere vital.
“I don’t understand.”
“I was waiting on the roof across the alley. I saw him come in.”
“He came to kill me.” Her breath was still too quick, and her skin was hot, much hotter than it should be.
“That seems obvious,” he said.
“They would have killed me if not for you.”
“Well, that second guy would have had me,” he said.
“Divines, you’re bleeding everywhere.”
“Nothing serious,” he said. “But speaking of bleeding, your arm-”
She looked at it, then back at him. He realized he had one hand on her shoulder and another on her stomach. He felt her belly quiver, and something happened to her eyes.
Stupid, he thought. This is stupid.
Her skin felt almost molten. She gasped when their lips came together, as if trying to get the air from his lungs. He smelled something like burning cloves and felt a shock of energy race through him like nothing he had ever known before, filling the emptiness left in him from two hard fights with impossible strength. She buried her face in his neck and he in hers, and they went down on the rug in a tangle, both wrestling furiously at ties and buttons.
Slick with blood, the salt from their sweat burned his wounds, but not enough to matter.
Later, much later it seemed, he lay back while she cleaned his wounds, first with warm water and then with a white ointment that left a pleasant warmth behind it and smelled a little like mustard. It did more than feel good; he could see the flesh draw together almost as if stitched. They had moved to her bedroom, where she had laid out a thick cover over her sheets and let him rest stretched out. She sat on the edge of the bed, the skin of her throat and breast like pearl in the moonlight-except for where the streaks of dried blood still clung. “Feel better?” she asked.
“Much,” he said. “Although I have to say, I didn’t feel it that much a little while ago either.”
She looked down. He thought she seemed embarrassed.
“Reaction,” he offered. “When you realize you’ve almost died, sometimes-you know.”
She shook her head. “When I summon daedra, I have to touch them with my mind. I have to be strong enough to keep them from turning on me. Daedra are-violent, passionate. Sometimes I feel something of what they do.” She looked away. “I think-” She shook her head and dabbed at the cut on his chest. “It’s also been a long time, for me. I haven’t felt I could trust anyone enough to-do that. I haven’t felt secure enough.”
“And you trust me?”
She smiled. “No. But-” She smiled. “Reaction. And there is something about you.” She cocked her head. “You’ve no reason to trust me either, I know. I’ve given you every reason not to. But I’m just trying to get through this. Alive. And sometimes it doesn’t seem worth the cost.”
“Cost?”
“This isn’t a life, Colin. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve been a spy in Hierem’s ministry since I was twenty-one. I’ve been with one other person in that time, and it was a disaster. I work, and I fear, and sometimes I do awful things. I have drinks with my sister for an hour or two most evenings and come home. I can’t talk to her about what I do. She stays out, gambles, goes for rides in the country, has affairs. I’m careful. I protect myself. And now I’m going to die anyway.”
“They failed,” he pointed out.
“But someone sent them, probably one of my rivals or Hierem himself. They’ll send more. I’ve made a mistake somewhere-probably to do with those two on the island. They know.” She lifted his hand and kissed it. “You’re very young,” she said. “You can get out of this. You should. I won’t stop you.”
“Are you giving up?” he asked.
“No. No, I can’t do that. But I don’t have to pull you down with me.”
He sighed. “I was in this already,” he said. “I have to-I have to do something right. Do you understand?”
“You did something right tonight,” she said. “You saved my life. Can’t that be enough?”
“Not if you die tomorrow.”
“We all die. You gave me at least a day more than I would have had. And not a bad one.”
“It’s not enough,” he said.
“Why?”
“It’s just not.”
“Don’t get angry,” she said.
“I’m not,” he replied.
“You sound it.”
“Okay,” he said, closing his eyes. “I’m not, though.” But he was, wasn’t he?
She didn’t say anything, but then he felt a tender kiss, just at the edge of his lips.
“It doesn’t have to be rough,” she said. “I can be gentle.”
He thought of the two men she had killed on the island, of the many who had perished in that house he had followed her to. He thought about the assassin he had just slaughtered, and realized he felt nothing.
He kissed her, and outside the night birds sang as if everything were normal, quiet, and in its place.
SIX
“Halt here,” Captain Falcus shouted. “Brennus, Mazgar-take three more and check out the village.”