"Why not leave the city now, from here? It would be safer. Enforcers are looking for me. The south gate is only a few moments' walk," Shale said.
Lord Kaneth looked at him in surprise. "Are you questioning Highlord Nealrith's orders? I do not think that anyone will challenge our right to escort you anywhere." He tapped the insignia on Soltar's tunic, a monogram of entwined letters. "That stands for Breccia Hall," he said.
"I didn't recognise it. And neither will the people in the street out there," Terelle told him. "And here on the thirty-sixth, they won't much care, either. All people care about now is water, and the reward offered for Shale's capture is a lifetime allotment. True, he's posed as a Reduner once out on the streets, but since then there's been a lot more searches and trouble. People are more alert."
Lord Kaneth surveyed Shale. "The disguise is a good one. We're not likely to have trouble."
"I agree with Terelle," Shale said. "Going up to the tenth would be foolish. Lord Nealrith can't understand the mood of the people of this level or know how dangerous Lord Taquar is."
The Breccian pikeman with the scar, Elmar, interrupted. "You speak of two highlords, young fellow. Keep a civil tongue behind your teeth!"
"He speaks of a man who killed his family!" Terelle rapped back. "Doesn't Highlord Nealrith know what is at stake?"
"Listen!" Shale cried suddenly. Strangers, men running up the stairs-he could sense them.
Kaneth misunderstood and ignored him. "All we know is an unsubstantiated story that may well malign a fellow rain-" he began. He did not get any further.
Shale shouted a warning. At the same moment, the door was pulled open. Terelle, who had been leaning against it, fell flat on her back, half in and half out of the doorway. Her head slammed onto the floor. A burly man wearing the uniform of the enforcers trampled over her, followed by seven or eight others. The room suddenly bristled with blades. Shale went to dive through them to get to Terelle, but Lord Kaneth grabbed his arm to jerk him back behind the table.
Elmar swung his pike up into a defensive position, attempting to bar the intruders from reaching Shale and the rainlord. "What is this?" he asked, puffing up in indignation. "Who dares to challenge the Cloudmaster's men? What do you want?"
"We have come to take the youth," the first man replied. "He is a wanted criminal."
Lord Kaneth stepped in front of Shale. "We have precedence in this matter, I think," he said. There was nothing lazy or slow about him now. "I am here representing Cloudmaster Granthon, who has given orders for this man to be brought before him."
"Highlord Taquar rules in Scarcleft. Not you." The sneer in the voice of the enforcer was an insult in itself. He turned to the men behind him. "Take the youth. If anyone tries to prevent you, kill them."
The enforcers moved forward as a block, one of them thrusting his pike across the table at Lord Kaneth to push him out of the way.
In an instant, Shale felt as if he had just been transported to the eye of a spindevil. The room exploded into a fury of action. Elmar swung his pike to slice into the arm of the enforcer threatening Lord Kaneth. Another blade flashed within inches of Shale's cheek-Kaneth's-and it sliced into the unprotected side of an assailant. Elmar swung his pike again, with lethal effect. One of the intruders fell, his head nearly severed by the pike blade, and blood squirted impossibly far, spraying everyone in the room.
Terelle was still on the floor. Every time she struggled to get up, someone trod on her.
Unexpectedly, Lord Kaneth jumped up onto the table and just stood there, no longer using his sword. Gadri was locked in hand-to-hand battle with another man; Soltar used his scimitar to hold off two others. The room was filled with noise: Terelle, still in the doorway, squealed as someone's heel came down on her hand. A man who'd had his face slashed was screaming and trying to hold the edges of his cheek together. Metal dashed on metal; men gasped and grunted. Familiar smells mingled in an unfamiliar mix: sweat, blood, bodily waste. Someone was shouting orders-a thin man in the doorway-but no one could hear him. Certainly no one took any notice.
Entirely forgetting that he was wearing a scimitar, Shale grabbed at the nearest article he could find to use as a weapon: the iron spit from the fireplace. He swung it hard at the head of the nearest Scarcleft enforcer. The man dropped, groaning. Someone slashed out with a scimitar at one of the intruders, and more blood sprayed across the room, catching Shale in a swathe of droplets. His stomach heaved as he wiped his face on his sleeve. He headed for the door to help Terelle, reckoning he was reasonably safe. It was unlikely that Taquar wanted him dead.
Terelle had given up trying to haul herself to her feet and was crawling out of the door, wincing in pain. The thin man standing there wrenched at the arm of one of the Scarcleft enforcers. "Kill her!" he ordered and pointed at Terelle. Shale yelled at her to run. She took one look at the man bearing down on her, scrambled to her feet and fled, vanishing from Shale's sight.
Another Scarcleft enforcer grabbed at him but then screamed, a hideous high-pitched sound. Shale saw something he would never forget as long as he lived: the man's eyes shrivelled up like dried bab fruits in the sun, their water pouring down his face. The man sank to his knees, wailing and clutching at his eyes. Shale looked wildly around the room: Elmar and Soltar were still fighting on, apparently unharmed, but Gadri was down on the floor, lying in a pool of blood. A disproportionate number of Scarcleft enforcers were out of the fight, either wounded by pike or scimitar slashes, or clutching their eyes and moaning.
Lord Kaneth remained standing on the table, untouched, surveying the room with a cold gaze. When his glance met that of the thin man, still standing in the doorway, he roared at him, "Stop the fighting!"
Elmar and Soltar stepped back immediately, and their opponents looked at the thin man for guidance. He held up his hand in agreement. "The fight is ours, I think," he said softly to the rainlord. "You are outnumbered. You are in our jurisdiction, Lord Kaneth, and I order you in the name of the Highlord of Scarcleft to surrender Shale Flint to me."
"I think not, Harkel" Kaneth said. "Look around at your men. How many of them are still in fighting condition?"
Before Harkel could reply, the Scarcleft enforcer closest to Shale grabbed him in a headlock from behind. Shale gasped, choking, as the man's arm tightened around his throat. The fellow had abandoned his sword for a knife, which now pricked Shale's ribs.
The balance had changed, yet Harkel hesitated before he said, "Surrender, or the lad dies."
Lord Kaneth smiled, unperturbed. "I suspect your orders were to take him alive and unharmed."
The arm at Shale's throat went into spasm then hardened; the grip loosened. Water soaked Shale's back and dripped onto the floor. One moment he was crushed against his captor's chest, the next he was jammed up against something as hard and as uneven as a rough stone wall. He looked down at the enforcer's forearm, and the hairs on his neck rose. The wrist that emerged from the sleeve of the uniform was as thin as a broom handle; white skin was now deep brown, like that of an animal carcass dried out in a desert sun. Water soaked Shale's tunic and breeches. The knife in the man's other hand dropped from rigid bony fingers. Shale yelped in shock and struggled, still caught in the man's unyielding clasp. A pool of water widened at his feet. The man's body, hard and almost without weight, bumped at his back. Horrified, Shale felt himself clutched in a lifeless embrace. The man had died wordlessly, before he could utter a cry, still standing.
"Our game, I think," Lord Kaneth drawled, still calm. "Unless you wish to join your enforcer as skin and bone and a pool of water on the floor."
In frantic horror, Shale thrust violently against the arm at his throat until the joints snapped. The body, a shrunken parody of a human being, released him and fell away into the water that had once given it life. Shale backed away, his revulsion total, his whole body shaking.