Sword-Maker(136)

“Tribes,” Del murmured. “But still, I think they’re outnumbered.”

“We don’t even know their numbers. Some of the warriors may have come through here every day, but most have camped elsewhere. The families have been here … with a few men to protect them.”

Rhashad nodded. “To make things look normal.”

I rose and kicked back my stool. “I think we should go back. Alric’s probably with Lena and the girls, but you never know.”

Even as we moved, the ululation died. The absence was eerie and strangely unsettling. Then everyone in the cantina was heading out the door.

“Come on, bascha,” I said. “I don’t like the way this feels—like something’s going to happen.”

Del followed me into the street.

Something did happen. It waited until we were almost all the way back to the house we shared with Alric, giving us time to breathe, but then it grew impatient. The time for waiting was done.

Del and I heard it before we saw it. Hoofbeats, then frenzied shouting. About four streets over.

“The bazaar,” Del said, unsheathing Boreal. In the moonlight, the blade was white.

I unsheathed my own, hating it all the while.

In the bazaar, people gathered. They hugged the shadows of empty stalls and dwellings uneasily, disliking uncertainty, but not knowing what else to do. In the middle of the bazaar, in the city’s precise center, tribesmen had gathered. Not many; I counted six, all mounted and ready to ride. We outnumbered them vastly.

A seventh horse was mounted, but not in the usual way. The man who rode it was dead.

“What are they?” Del asked.

“A couple of Vashni. A Hanjii. A Tularain. Even two Salset.”

“Do you know the Salset?”

“I knew them. They didn’t know a chula.”

A stirring ran through the crowd. One of the tribesmen—a Vashni—continued his harangue, pointing at the body, then gesticulated sharply. Clearly, he was unhappy.

“What is he saying?” Del asked, since he spoke pure Desert in the dialect of the Punja.

I released a noisy breath. “He’s giving us a warning—no, not us; he’s warning the tanzeers. The man—the dead man—crept up to their gathering and tried to murder the Oracle, just as Rhashad predicted. Now he’s telling the tanzeers they’re all fools; that the Oracle will live to present the jhihadi to us, just as he has promised.” I paused, listening. “He says they don’t want war. They only want what’s rightfully theirs.”

“The South,” Del said grimly.

“And the sand changed to grass.”

The warrior stopped shouting. He gestured, and one of the others cut the ropes binding the body on the horse. The body fell facedown; it was turned over roughly, then stripped of its wrappings to display the bloody nakedness and its blatant mutilation.

I must have made a sound. Del looked at me sharply. “Do you know him?”

“Sword-dancer,” I answered tightly. “Not a very good one—and not a very smart one—but someone I knew nonetheless.” I drew in a deep breath. “He didn’t deserve that.”

“He tried to kill the Oracle.”

“Stupid, stupid Morab.” I touched her on the arm. “Let’s go, bascha. The message has been delivered.”

“Will the tanzeers listen?”

“No. This just means they’ll have to look to their own men to find another assassin. No sword-dancer will take the job; I’m surprised Morab did.”

“Maybe he wanted the money.”

I slanted her a disgusted glance. “It’ll be hard to spend it now.”

Even as Del and I went back into the shadows, the hoofbeats sounded again. I knew without having to look: the warriors were riding out. And Morab was dead and gone, lost to greed and stupidity. Someone would bury him; already the gawkers gathered.

The darkness was thick and deep in the caverns of recessed doors. Del and I knew better; we avoided those we could without exposing ourselves too much by using too much of the street. A compromise was best. Compromise—and a sword.

And yet the sword didn’t help much when the thing slashed across my vision and thunked home in the wood of a doorjamb but two feet from my face.

“Sorry,” a voice said. “I just wanted a little practice.”

He should have known better. Not only did the voice tell me who he was, it told me where he was. And I went there quickly to find him.

He grinned, stepping smoothly out of a doorway directly across the street. In each of his hands was an ax; the third was stuck in the wood.

“Ax,” Del said quietly, inspecting the planted weapon as I moved to cut off its thrower.