The room was dark, but his eyes were adapted. He saw the glitter of the partially sheathed blade against a knotted wool rug as the assassin came around the corner of the bed, no longer bothering with stealth. The knife that flashed in his hand was not sheathed.
Temur rolled aside as the assassin lunged for him. Stones beneath thick wool bruised his shoulder. Scar tissue binding his neck and chest pulled as he tucked and let the roll carry him out of the way.
He lashed out left-handed and felt the cool hilt of his knife. Ridges on the grip dug into his palm as he got a foot down and stood, dancing back almost immediately to avoid the glittering sweep of a blade.
He dodged the knife but not the boot that followed. The kick knocked him sharply to the wall. Something behind him clattered as it fell. He wheezed, lungs spasming, and barely drew a breath.
Temur’s knife was longer, but the other man had more reach. And there was always the threat that the blade might be poisoned.
In songs, they sang always of the red tide of war fury rising. Temur had never experienced it so. Instead, he found himself detached and aloof, as if he floated above his body while it calmly made decisions and moved to kill or be killed.
The assassin’s dark shape was more a blur of motion than the outline of a man. Temur’s body darted forward, reaching with the knife. The assassin moved aside as effortlessly as if he had never been there. Temur let the lunge turn to a roll and came back to his feet, but not before the assassin’s blade touched him. The force of the blow rocked him, but he felt no pain.
He’d felt no pain from the blow that could have severed his head, either. A thick streamer of wetness crossed his right hand, slicking his grip on the knife. But now the assassin was between Temur and the window and clearly silhouetted.
Not too big of a man, though taller than Temur. Temur thought he might be stronger than the assassin. The other man did not look broad across the shoulders.
He kicked out for the knee, a feint, ready to follow with a knife thrust if the assassin moved the way Temur wanted. But instead he stepped inside the arc of the blow, and Temur’s shin bounced harmlessly off the other man’s thigh. The assassin closed, pressing his advantage. Temur lashed out with his blade, trying for the assassin’s knife arm. Something dragged; perhaps he had just caught cloth, but the assassin’s breath changed—a grunt and a hiss. The knife scored Temur’s shoulder instead of plunging into his chest.
They broke apart, breathing hard. Temur had managed to keep his back to the wall. The silhouette helped, but not enough.
Unless he managed something quickly, he was going to lose this fight. The battle-ready animal in charge of his body now did not know it. But Temur, above and behind himself, understood. He knew his chest heaved; he knew his heart thundered. But it was as if the body that knowledge encompassed belonged to someone else.
He watched himself gather to charge the knife again, and would have drawn a breath to shout if he’d had lungs to draw it with.
The door of his sleeping chamber burst open, and a blaze of brilliance flooded the room. He saw his own stark shadow, the assassin’s hazel eyes lit through as if by the sun. He saw the indigo of the assassin’s veil and the fluidity with which he threw himself back into a handspring and was gone out the fourth-story window as if he had never been.
“I heard the fight. You’re bleeding,” Samarkar said from the doorway, as Temur fell back into himself.
Suddenly there was pain, sharp, drawn in lines across his arm and shoulder. Pain and the stickiness of blood.
“I’ve been cut,” he said, and put out his empty hand to the wall as he swayed.
16
Nilufer Khatun turned out her garrison, but they found no trace of the assassin. Temur thought it was the same man they’d fought in the pass, though it was hard to tell in the dark. Still, something about the way he moved was familiar.
It was some days before they were well and rested enough to travel on. In that time Nilufer saw to it that they had new boots, provisions, and enveloping robes to protect them against the glare of the desert sun.
For Temur, the hardest part was leaving the mares behind: for Samarkar it was Payma. But neither mares nor princess could come with them across the Great Salt Desert, and so eventually they made their farewells, shouldered their packs, and joined Hrahima and Brother Hsiung on the road below.
When they walked away from Stone Steading, it was all Temur could do to keep himself from looking back over his shoulder every few strides. By the stiffness of her own spine, Samarkar felt no different.
The desert lay five days’ march beyond, according to the map with which Nilufer had provided them. By the fourth day, it was desert enough to meet Temur’s not terribly exacting standards; scrub struggled through hardpan baked to cracking, and their footprints left no lingering trace.