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He moved smoothly and silently until, while he was raising his leg over two missing steps, the lower board gave way. The blond man lurched forward, using his sword for balance, not defence, and another sword swished through the air above him and bit deep into his arm. Metal began to sing loudly against metal; green sparks danced in the air. By their faint light it was clear that Walegrin, with a cut in his shoulder and his legs entangled in the ruins of the stairs, was taking a beating.
Thrusher shouted outside for help, though with Walegrin wedged in the stairway, there was no easy way to reach Burek, nor to protect their captain - but there was one way. While Thrusher watched in surprise, Cythen drew her own sword and prepared to get up to the second floor by ru
The Beysib circled away from the stairwell, and Cythen edged along the walls. This room was not the dusty wreckage the lower parts of the building had been. Someone had been using it recently. Knives littered an otherwise clean table and a crude map of the town hung on the wall. There was another curved Beysib sword on the wall as well, but Turghurt hadn't taken it. The room was too small for the swirling double-sword style the Harka Bey had used. His stance was not that much different from her own, though his reach was substantially longer.
Walegrin, still struggling to free himself from the stairs, broke through another board and fell from sight, shaking the entire structure as he landed. From the commotion, Cythen knew they were trying to improvise a human ladder, but at that moment Turghurt was easily parrying her best cuts and she doubted they'd reach her in time.
She wouldn't have the strength to ward off many of his thunderous attacks. She could stall and hope they'd get something together in time, or she could charge him and hope for the same sort of clear shot as she'd gotten at the Harka Bey though that would kill him and might make everything worse.
He guessed her intention to attack and back-pedalled across the room, laughing to himself. He was silhouetted by a hole in the walls where a window might once have been and he seemed very large, but perhaps his laughing had made him drop his guard just a fraction. She sprang at him.
His eyes went wide with disbelief. He was falling towards her before she touched him, the disbelief becoming a fixed, deathlike stare. His momentum pushed her backwards and off balance, knocking her sword aside. But he was no longer attacking, only falling. They both went crashing to the floor and through it, as the old wood gave way beneath them. Cythen heard a scream - her own - then nothing.
3
The sun was bright in the courtyard of the palace. Cythen, the swelling still apparent in her face, and Walegrin, his arm in a sling, stood with the Hell Hounds in the places of honour. There were, as yet, no Beysibs in sight. Enas Yorl let the curtain fall from his hand and sat back in the shadowed privacy of his study. It seemed the whole population of the town had crammed around the high platform whereupon the Beysa would pronounce judgement.
'Would you have stopped him for the courtesan's sake alone?' he asked the darkness beside him.
'The girl-soldier has conquered her fears and her past. We have made her a part of our sisterhood. We, too, must adapt. Her vengeance is ours,' the voice of a Beysib woman replied.
'Ah, but that wasn't the question. If all you knew was that the Blood of Bey, as you call it, had been used to slay an i
'No. We have always been blamed for crimes we do not commit. It is part of the balance we have with the Empire. One insignificant life would have made no difference.'
Trumpets blared out a fanfare. Yorl lifted the curtain again. Sunlight fell on a four-fingered, ebony hand. The Beysa had arrived at the platform, her breasts so heavily painted they scarcely seemed naked. Her long golden hair swirled plumelike in the light breeze. The moment had arrived and the crowd grew quiet. Terrai Burek, the prime minister, ascended the platform and behind him, in chains, came his son, Turghurt.
The young man stumbled and the guards rushed forward to get him back on his feet. Even at this distance, it was plain that something had happened to the young man and that he had no clear idea why his aunt, the Beysa Shupansea, was standing in the sun, telling everyone that he was going to die for the deaths of his own people and for the death of a Sanctuary courtesan. Yorl let the curtain drop again.
'Then why did you use just enough venom on your dart to destroy his mind but not enough to kill him?'
The Beysib woman laughed melodically. 'He overstepped himself. He thought to arouse Shupansea's rage by slaying Sharilar, her cousin, while they walked along the wharf. But he killed not only Sharilar, but Prism - and that we could not forgive.'
'But you could have killed him outright. Wouldn't that have been the true vengeance of Bey?'
'Bey is a goddess of many moods; she is life as well as death. This is a lesson for everyone: for town and Beysib. They will respect each other a little more now. Shupansea, herself, needed to pronounce this judgement. She must rise to rule here or Turghurt will be only the first.'
There was a collective gasp from the crowd and Yorl drew back the curtain for the third time. The Beysa was holding a small, bloody knife, while her serpent wound around her arm. Turghurt was already dead. The crowd broke into cheering, just as Yorl felt the sharp prick of fangs on his own neck.
Poison burned and gripped him in hands of red-hot iron. The sunlit courtyard grew dim, then black. The homed gateway to the seventh level of paradise shone before him. The ancient magician's spirit stumbled forward and fell, with the gate just beyond his reach.
Failure - and with the land of death almost within his grasp. He wept and brushed the tears away with a shaggy paw. The room was dark and filled with the odour from the pyre on which they'd immolated the criminal, depriving his spirit of eternal life within the goddess Bey. And Yorl was left with only the memory of death to sustain him.