Perone and the guard picked her up and dumped her on the table. “You should be grateful,” Perone told her, unbuckling his sword belt, as the other man held her arms down over her head. “I am a great man of the revolution. If you are fortunate, you may die with my bastard in your belly.”
They were going to kill her, Sasha realised, blinking her vision clear. Or at least, they had moved her upstairs so that no sudden breakthrough on the lower floors could liberate the dungeons.
“Pity to waste her,” said the blond man above her. “Can I have a turn?”
“We’ll invite the whole fucking movement,” said Perone, placing his swordbelt aside, and unfastening his pants. “If they won’t let me fight, they must at least let me fuck.” He pulled a knife, inserted it into her underwear leg, and slashed.
Quite strangely, it occurred to Sasha that her hands, pulled back over her head, were close to the blond man’s belt. Did he keep a knife there? Her hands reached and found a hilt. It seemed he did.
She pulled it hard and stuck it in his belly before he could notice what she’d done. The pressure on her arms ceased, and she flipped her legs up, wrapped her ankle chain about Perone’s neck, and pulled as tight with her legs as humanly possible. Perone’s hands grasped the chain, trying to pull it off. Sasha slammed her feet down on the tabletop, and took Perone’s head down with them. His flailing arm struck her, reaching for her throat. Sasha stuck the other man’s knife in it. Perone flung himself sideways, pulling her off the table. They hit the ground together, Sasha careful to brace her legs and not lose the tightness of that loop around his neck. Perone tried to roll away, and Sasha took the opportunity to make a second loop, hooking her ankle again around his head. Then she braced both feet on the floor, and tried to stretch out from the knees as hard as she could, pulling the chain tighter and tighter.
It was a big-link chain. A small-link chain would have been more supple, and cut more tightly. The big link chain took longer, and required more effort. Sasha thought that perfectly fine. Perone’s horrid choking, his desperate agony, his flailing hands and spluttered attempts to beg, scream, cry for help, were all blissful music to her soul.
“I told you I would,” she told him. She had never hated like this. It felt indescribably wonderful.
Perone died sooner than she’d hoped. She didn’t trust it, and stuck the knife in his neck just to be sure. She got up, and found the other man slumped against the far wall, clutching a bloody wound just below his heart. She hadn’t expected to have stuck him so well, but it seemed she was so good with blades these days that her hands knew what to do, even if the mind was elsewhere. He was sobbing and frightened, apparently in too much pain to risk inhaling, and cry out for help. Coward, Sasha thought, searching Perone’s body for a key. She found a ring of them on his belt, dropped with his pants now about his feet. A few moments’ searching found the right key, and she unlocked manacles from wrists and ankles.
No sooner had she done so than the door clanked open once more. Sasha was on her feet in a flash, taking Perone’s sword from its sheath, and was onto the new arrival in quick strides just as he realised what had happened. The man’s reach for his sword ended with Sasha’s blade tearing his throat, the head nearly severed, blood jetting in violent sprays as he fell. It trickled down her face, warm and sticky, as she walked to where the wounded man sat, staring at her in helpless terror.
Sasha knew of no graceful stroke that would kill a seated man, or she would have done it then and there. There was a lot of blood on his hands. She’d driven the knife in almost to the hilt, and none of these Civid Sein wore armour. So close to the heart, there was no surviving such a wound. Better that he died slowly, anyhow.
She took his blade, a short sword like the Steel used, sheath and all. She also took Perone’s coat, as it fitted her better than the big cloak, and would not impede her movement. The knife, she put in the coat’s pocket. Then she padded lightly into the corridor, a naked midlength blade in her right hand, a sheathed short one in her left. Pain blazed with every motion, but it was a welcome price to pay. As against the joy of revenge, pain was nothing. She had tasted the blood of enemies, and like a drunkard sniffing the scent of a brew, she wanted more.
She moved quickly, bare feet soundless on stone, pausing to peer into open doorways before passing. Footsteps gave her warning to duck into one room, as several Civid Sein came into the corridor, then opened the door through which she’d last seen Reynold Hein disappear. She caught a glimpse within before it closed-it was a command room of some sort, perhaps it had a good view of the fighting. There could be quite a few men inside such a room. The thought brought her no pause, only cheer.
She strode calmly to the door, testing the balance of her blade. It had not the length of a svaalverd weapon, its hilt barely long enough for her accustomed two-handed grip, and the balance felt all wrong…but she knew enough one-handed svaalverd extensions to think she would manage. As for the rest, well, she had always liked to improvise. She changed the sword to her left hand, holding it and the sheathed short sword together, and opened the door. There were three high, arched windows on the right wall, before which four men were gathered, behind a large desk. Another three stood about a small table, poring over some parchments. None looked up immediately as she entered, gaining her several strides with which to close the range and take the knife from her pocket.
The first looked up-a Nasi-Keth, a man she recognised from the Tol’rhen. Jardine, she recalled the name. She hurled the knife, and he fell with it sticking from his throat. The second and third reached for their weapons in panic. Sasha killed the one nearest with a single slash, leaped onto the low tabletop to clear the third man’s defence, and drove the point down through his shoulder, into the heart. She landed on light feet, rounded a chair and came at those by the windows. One, Reynold Hein, was yelling at the top of his lungs for assistance.
Sasha grabbed her short blade by the hilt and swung so that the sheath flew off, straight at the first man, who ducked. The big, bald man who had beaten her and Errollyn in the dungeon came around the big table at her, while Reynold drew a throwing knife. Sasha threw the short blade at Reynold, no great throw, but it made him duck. The big man swung hard from above…a stupid attack; Sasha just swayed aside and impaled him with his own momentum.
She pushed him back several steps, using his bulk as a shield from Reynold’s knife. The man she’d thrown the sheath at was trying to come about on her left. As he raised his blade for a strike, Sasha pulled her sword free of the big man’s gut, spun low and took the other’s leg. He fell screaming, and Sasha grabbed up his fallen blade and hurled that at Reynold too. Reynold ducked aside again as the blade scythed by his head, and lost his knife as he rolled. The big man collapsed, face first, clutching his stomach.
Reynold’s last standing companion was Timoth Salo. The young nobleman held his blade two-handed, Nasi-Keth style, staring incredulously at Sasha, then about at the carnage she’d wrought. The man she’d legged was still screaming, clutching the terrible wound. Sasha stuck her blade in his back to shut him up.
“What did you do?” Salo said with horror. And again, on the verge of hysterical tears, “What did you do?” As though it had not occurred to him that his friends could die so easily. As though it had not occurred to him that his own actions could lead to this end.
Sasha rose from her crouch and advanced slowly. “You thought this was a game?” The calm of her voice amazed her. Dripping fury, and cold as ice, yet steady. Revenge made her calm, when all about her was crazy. No sheth an sary. She had never felt more Lenay than she did at that moment. “Did you think I was joking when I said I’d kill you all?”