The sound of steel being drawn cut through the muted hiss of the rain and wind outside.
Kip widened his eyes to the sub-red spectrum-and the invisible man snapped into focus. Cloaked but still radiating more heat than his surroundings. He was walking straight toward Kip, not bothering to lower his own center of gravity. Kip must look like easy meat.
Looking around frantically like he had no idea what was going on, Kip waited until the cloaked man stepped closer. Apparently the cloak only concealed what was beneath it, so the man had only a short sword, and he couldn’t lift it until the last second or it would be revealed, hanging in midair. So the man walked forward, sword point down.
When the man was within two paces, Kip screamed. He leapt toward the man and to the side, left arm sweeping in a block that batted the man’s sword arm even as it came up, and his right hand burying his own dagger in the man’s chest.
Sub-red was bad for making out detail, or Kip was just clumsy, because his feet landed on books and apple cores and flew out from under him. He lost his dagger.
He popped back up to his feet, the battle rush making him shake. The invisible man was now very much visible, flopped on his back, arms wide, unmoving, Kip’s dagger staked straight through his chest.
Kip looked around frantically. Janus had had a thousand muskets in here. Why couldn’t he find any of them now? Nothing seemed to be on fire now, though the smell of smoke was heavy in the air. He also smelled the resinous, fresh cedar smell of green luxin. They’d smothered fires with luxin. Fires. Janus Borig had said she’d booby-trapped the cards upstairs. Maybe she’d laid traps down here, too.
“Vox?!” a woman’s voice shouted from upstairs. “What was that?”
Snatching up his dagger from the dead man, Kip charged up the steps, as stealthy as a rhinoceros falling onto a crate of porcelain. The woman was standing at the wall of cards, pulling them down, sticking them into a wooden case with dividers, but she was already looking alarmed when Kip came into her view. She dropped the case onto a table and pulled her cloak around herself.
Without noticing, Kip had let his eyes go back to normal vision, and he saw the briefest glimpse of the upper room. Janus Borig lay in a bloody heap by her desk, dead. One smooth section of the wall had been broken open, revealing a hiding place that must have held cards or other treasures, and half the wall was bare.
The shimmer came toward him, and he relaxed his eyes. The invisible woman became a warm glow, coming fast toward him, raising her short sword at the last second. These assassins must be used to easy kills, because when Kip dodged, she was so surprised she didn’t even try to adjust. He spun as he jumped past her and lashed out.
His dagger brushed something and then pulled through. Kip thought-hoped-that it was the side of her neck. He crouched low, out in the middle of the room.
“You’re a sub-red,” she said. “Always hated sub-reds.” She shimmered back into visibility. She was a petite woman, blonde hair and pale skin, blue eyes made mostly green by drafting. Eyes narrow, face like a ferret. Her hair was pulled back into two braids. One of them had been cut halfway through by Kip’s dagger. She drew a pistol.
Kip snatched up Janus’s little chair and threw it at the assassin. She jumped aside, but had already pulled her trigger. The gun roared, its sound amplified in the small room. A series of loud whines, one on top of the other, rang out as the lead ball ricocheted off the walls.
The woman cursed and grabbed her leg, either hit by the bullet or faking it. Kip had no idea how badly it had wounded her. She threw the pistol at him, missed, and then attacked him with the short sword.
Her blade wasn’t a fencing weapon by any means. Short and broad, it was meant for stabbing the unsuspecting, and making sure that single stab was lethal. Kip’s blade was almost the same length, but narrower, sharper, and held by a much worse fighter and a much bigger target.
But the woman was hurt. Kip got into a knife fighting stance, trying to remember everything his trainers had ever said. The assassin might be feigning that her injury was worse than it was to lure Kip into doing something stupid.
Patience. If she was hurt, she’d do something reckless to try to end the fight quickly.
“People will be here any second,” Kip said. “You might as well-”
She lunged at him and he batted her short sword aside and punched her in the face with his ruined left hand. At least it made a good fist-and good contact. She staggered back, wobbling a bit on her injured left leg.
If he’d followed hard after that strike, he could have ended the fight there, but he was tentative, worried she was tricking him.
She recovered, nose streaming blood, weaving. Maybe exaggerating the weaving a little.
“Every guard captain in five blocks has been bribed,” she said. “And you hear that?”
Kip wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Oh, the thunder.
“That means no one who’s heard the shots will think anything of it. You’re going to die here, fire boy.”
“Why’d you do it?” Kip asked. Stalling. He could see a bloodstain spreading on her dark trousers. The ricochet had hit her.
There is no cheating in war; there are only survivors and victims. Trainer Fisk had pounded those lessons into his class. Blackguards weren’t taught to duel; they were taught to kill.
Kip was no knife fighter, but he was stronger than this woman, especially as the blood loss weakened her. Their slow circling had brought him back within reach of the stool.
“Orders,” she said. “And who the hell are you, so I can report who we killed?”
“Kip Guile,” he said.
“Guile?”
Kip hurled his knife at the woman. It was never a good idea to throw your knife, unless you know how to throw knives. Kip didn’t. But she wasn’t expecting it-and it hit her, right in her chest. Hilt first.
But she jumped back, cursing, and Kip grabbed the stool, swinging it with both hands in a great arc.
The assassin tried to move back farther, but she was right against the wall, there was nowhere to go. Kip connected solidly, all of his strength in the blow. She tried to block it, but he crushed through her defense, breaking one leg of the stool, leaving it an awkward weapon.
But he didn’t repeat his earlier mistake; this time he followed up his attack. The room was brighter than it had been earlier, and he could see that the assassin’s arm was obviously broken, but she still somehow held on to her knife. She was reaching over to grab it with her left hand when Kip crashed into her, smashing her against the wall with his lowered shoulder.
He heard the whoosh of her breath being crushed out of her, and then they were both scrambling for her dagger.
“Niah!” A voice cried out from the stairs. “Get down!”
Kip turned to see the other assassin-the one he swore he’d killed-standing there, pistol leveled. The assassin, Niah, tried to wriggle away from Kip and dive to the floor, but he held her, absorbed by the tiny orange dot hovering above the man’s pistol-a burning slow match. It slapped down into the pan.
Kip spun with Niah, face-to-face, abandoning all thought of the dagger between them.
A boom, and she snapped her head forward into his face. Her headbutt caught him in the nose and lip. His eyes instantly flooded with tears.
“Niah!”
Kip stumbled backward, tripped, fell on his ass. The assassin Niah dropped like a pile of meat, the back of her skull exploded. What Kip had thought was a headbutt was her brained skull snapping forward into him from absorbing a bullet.
He smacked his head on the wall as he fell, not so hard that it dazed him, but it still hurt.
I’m a moron. He reached into a pocket and snatched out his green spectacles.
The other assassin, Vox, was staring in horror at the shattered head of his partner, whom he’d just killed. But Kip’s movement made him spring into action, leaping forward and kicking Kip in the head.