Knives
Berend does not want to fight this man. He wants even less to kill him, but he’d rather that than give Hybrook Belisia the satisfaction of prematurely concluding his attempts to keep the world from ending. He’d also like to get back to the Temple District before the city scrambles itself around again.
Scarlet night is falling, but it’s still light enough to see that despite the gunshot, there’s no one else around—or they’re quite wisely hiding indoors. This particular street would have been a quiet one, under normal circumstances, but there isn’t a student in sight. There are no lectures from which to return home, nor philosophical discussions to be had over ale or coffee. Everyone is either crowded around the chasm, arguing over how best to build a bridge, holed up inside, or fled to the Temple of Isra.
Berend had mistaken this man for a student, from a distance, but his mistake is obvious now. The disheveled, hungry look isn’t an aesthetic choice, or the result of late nights peering at mathematical figures by candlelight. It’s only good, old-fashioned poverty. Whether it’s recent, or this would-be assassin spent his childhood cutting purses with a smaller knife, Berend can’t say.
“We can pretend we never saw each other,” Berend offers.
The young man shakes his head, keeping his eyes on Berend’s sword. Behind those eyes, fear is doing battle with whatever motivation he had to accept this job.
“How much did he offer you?” Berend can’t help but asking. He’d like to know how much his head is worth these days. His previous record, back when a petty lord offered his own mercenaries a bounty for every Son of Galaser they killed, was a gold crown.
“Enough to get out of the city,” says the young man.
Berend isn’t sure there is a way out of Mondira at the moment. Maybe if one were to risk the fog and follow the wall of bone west, but he can’t be sure. There might not be much beyond what he can see of the city. He’ll have to ask Isabel, if he manages to live through this and find her.
He considers running. It would be easy to get lost, given the state of things. If he could get to the Temple District, where there are more people, it would be even easier. With a little clever maneuvering, and some hiding in the Temple of Isra, this assassin would never see him again.
That is, of course, if Berend can outrun someone just over half his age. Considering the past couple of days, his odds don’t look good.
“Let’s get this over with, then,” he says, and swings his sword.
He means to knock the knife out of the way with the saber’s greater weight, but the assassin steps out of the way. The young man’s eyes flick up and down, looking for an opening—he has experience, but no training. That’s something Berend can use.
The young man looks at Berend’s right side before he strikes, angling the knife point under Berend’s elbow. He’s quick, but Berend is already stepping back out of range, turning away from the blade and bringing his saber back in a drawing cut that makes the air sing.
It’s a miss. The assassin twists out of the way, grit scraping under his boots as he finds his footing again. He takes an experimental step toward Berend’s left, then toward the right.
The knife darts out toward Berend’s face, but the assassin’s eyes are on his belly—right where there would be a clear opening, if Berend raised his arms to deflect the higher blow.
But he doesn’t. Berend ignores the feint and backs away from the real strike, his feet light despite how heavy days of exhaustion and multiple injuries make him feel. He brings his saber down against the knife with all his weight behind it.
A crack disturbs the silent street, followed by a ringing, metallic tone. The knife has broken in half, and the larger part of its blade strikes the ground and skitters away into the gutter. The young man’s eyes follow it for only a second before darting back to Berend.
“I don’t suppose you have more knives,” Berend says.
The assassin says nothing, but since he doesn’t pull another blade from his clothing, Berend has his answer. Keeping his sword up in a guard, he takes another step back.
An evening chill has settled in, and the fight has lasted only a moment, but the young man is sweating and breathing hard—more from fear than exertion. He looks down at the broken knife in his hand. It’s useless as a weapon now, especially against the full reach of Berend’s saber. He tosses it aside.
“Are you going to kill me?” he asks.
Berend makes sure that both halves of the knife and the empty pistol are well out of the young man’s reach before sheathing his sword. “No, I don’t think I will,” he says.
“What am I supposed to do?” the erstwhile assassin asks the empty street and the unhearing gods. He looks, suddenly, even younger than Berend had guessed.
Berend is the only one here, so he answers. “If you want to get out of the city, now’s a good a time as any. It’s safer to stay, though. I think.”
The young man looks as doubtful as Berend’s statement deserves. He backs away for three paces, and on the fourth, he turns and runs, disappearing behind a two-story brick house.
Where are the Belisias finding these poor bastards? Berend wonders as he goes to pick up his things and continue on his way. Hired thugs aren’t usually in short supply—from an uncharitable view, Berend himself is one of them—and one would think that Hybrook would be able to afford someone a little older, a little more experienced, or a little more willing to draw blood. Doesn’t Sterry the Bastard have anyone available? Maybe he left the city, too, or was swallowed up in the fog, along with all his criminal friends.
Bending down to pick up the bundle of clothing, Berend can feel the floor he slept on last night, as well as all the cuts on his chest. He regrets, not for the first and definitely not for the last time, not waiting this out in Lady Breckenridge’s feather bed. He’s deluding himself, isn’t he? Every time he thinks he can do something, anything, to stop the many-eyed thing from closing in on the city, it’s a lie. If he’s going to be devoured, he might as well be comfortable until that point. City center is blocked off, sure, but the watch can’t guard every street all of the time, especially not with how many people are gathering in the Temple District next door.
He shakes his head, as if to send the thought away. He promised Isabel he’d be back, and he wouldn’t be able to enjoy Lady Breckenridge’s company if he thought there might be something he could do and wasn’t doing. Besides, if he’d stayed at her apartments, the assassin would have eventually found him there, which is why he dragged himself out in the first place.
He should check in on her, though—just for a moment, not long enough to tempt him to stay and certainly not long enough for another of the Belisias’ hirelings to find him there. He’d like to know if she’s safe, and if she’s not, to help her get there. If he goes through the Temple District and takes a side road, he might be able to slip past the watch. Then I’ll get back to Isabel, he promises. It won’t take an hour.
At the great divide in the University District, the students have created a precarious, narrow walkway that slants across the abyss at a dizzying angle. A railing, made of partial ladders, chair legs, and random boards from gods know where, has been nailed to only one side. Six lanterns sit beside the edge at the top of the ramp, and another cluster is gathered at the bottom, where one man holds an unrolled drawing of what might be a better bridge while two others argue over it with animated gestures.
“Is it safe?” Berend asks the professorly type supervising at the top of the ramp.
The man scratches his chin and tilts his head to one side. “Well, we’re working on increasing the weight limit, and it’s a little unbalanced at the moment—”
Berend cuts him off with a raised hand. “If I walk down there, is it going to tip and spill me into the crevasse?”
“Probably not,” he says, far too cheerfully for the circumstances, in Berend’s opinion.
Right. Here goes. He used to scale castle walls with a rope. He’s even climbed the rigging in a ship, once in the middle of a storm. He can do this.
The boards creak in complaint as he steps onto the bridge. He grips the railing with his free hand, wincing as splinters dig into his palm. The next creak is louder, and he stops in place, one step from the safety of solid ground.
“Please tell me someone has done this before me,” he says, turning his head slowly so as not to upset the bridge’s delicate balance.
The professor smiles and says, “Of course!”
Berend thinks he might be lying, but he recognizes a few faces up here that he remembers from the other side, earlier today, so he clenches his teeth and keeps his eyes straight ahead and puts one foot in front of the other while the boards bow downward and complain with every step.
His foot hits stone before he thinks he’s reached the end, sending a shock up his leg. A cheer goes up from the gathered students, which doesn’t make him feel any better—were they worried he wasn’t going to make it?
Berend doesn’t acknowledge them. He’d rather not know.
He can hear the Temple District before he arrives. A confusion of voices—many more than he saw this morning—washes down the hill and past the university hospital. When he turns the corner to the road that goes up the hill, he meets the back of the crowd. It fills the street and the spaces between the temples, a roiling mass of people that ebbs and flows more like a body of water than a collection of individuals. There’s no way he can get through.
It’s dark now, except for the red glow on the horizon behind him. It reflects off the encroaching fog and stains the temples pink and orange. Berend would have thought the crowds might disperse by now, but they have nowhere else to go, except maybe the university. Whole districts are gone. In their position, he’d go to the Temple District or the city center, too, to demand answers from the spiritual or temporal authorities, whichever he could get to first.
At the top of the hill, a priest of Alcos shouts over the din, but Berend can’t hear him. Neither can the people gathered here at the bottom of the hill. “What’s going on?” someone asks.
“Is it really the end of the world?”
“What happened to the West Gate?”
This last question is a surprise to Berend. Sure enough, when he turns around, there’s a wall of fog where the westernmost district should be.
I’ve probably got about twelve hours before the whole city is fog.
And where’s Isabel? There’s no chance he could see her from here, much less walk to the temple of Isra, sitting at the top of the hill. It might as well be on the other side of the wall of bone.
He’ll have to go around, and the wall of bone might provide him with a way into the city center and back, as long as it stays where it is. Between the state of the world and the crowd, it’s likely he’ll get cut off.
He tells himself he’ll turn around and come back if it looks bad. Lady Breckenridge has a doorman for her building and the entire city watch for her district. She’ll probably be fine if he can’t make it to her. Probably.
He’s still going to try. He’ll keep all his promises—to Lady Breckenridge, to Isabel, and to Mikhail and Bessa Kyne—until the moment the thing beyond the wall eats him.
Berend heads north, around the temple of Ondir and into the fog.
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