promising constantly to reveal more than it should, but, like a teasing courtesan, always managing to renege.
She breathed heavily from the exertion of the rapid dance, spinning and twisting through the arms of a dozen of her fellow celebrants. Her smile lit up her features-high and somewhat sharp, forming a face that few would envision when imagining a classic beauty, yet which all would agree was beautiful once they saw it-but that smile failed to reach her eyes. For all that she tried to lose herself in the festivities, in the adoration of those who watched her, who reached out in hopes of a simple fleeting touch, she could not.
Damn him anyway! Guilt was not an emotion with which Liliana was well acquainted, and she found swiftly that it was not at all to her liking.
The bizarre accumulation of notes and beats and rhythms successfully masquerading as a song came to an end, and so did the last of Liliana's ability to fake any remaining enthusiasm for the celebration. The musicians, bowing to much applause and acclaim, left the stage for a well-earned break, leaving an instrument with enchanted strings to play a slow and lonesome ditty until they returned. Several couples remained in the room's center, swaying to the somber notes, but most returned to their tables to await a more energetic piece.
Liliana watched them go, marveling at these people among whom she'd made her temporary home. They were all clad in their best and fanciest-which here in Avaric meant tunics with long sleeves instead of short, trousers without obvious patches, and vests that actually boasted some faint color, rather than their normal browns and grays. Nobody here could afford the rich dyes or the fancy buttons and clasps of the rich, yet they wore their 'finery' with pride; splurged on lean steaks when they normally subsisted on fungi and the occasional fish or reptile hauled from the swampy pools. And they lived it up as though such ridiculous luxuries actually meant something.
Liliana didn't understand any of it. She approved of it, even respected it, but she didn't understand it.
Even as she floated back to her table, hand reaching for a glass of rough beer to quench her thirst, Liliana spotted a figure moving toward her through the crowd. A gruff face, split into what the owner probably thought was a charming smile, leered at her through a thick growth of beard. Two sausage-like thumbs hooked themselves through the pockets of a heavy black vest, perhaps trying to draw attention to the fine garment. The drunkard had been watching her all night, since well before Kallist had ruined the evening and stormed off in a huff. Every night there was always at least one, and she'd wondered how long it would take him to drink enough nerve to approach.
'I couldn't help but notice,' he slurred in a voice heavy with beer, 'that you finally sent your scrawny friend packing. That mean you interested in spending some time with a real man?'
In a better mood, Liliana might've engaged in some light flirting before telling the drunk to find his own personal hell and stay there. Not tonight.
Liliana lifted her dinner knife, still stained with remnants of her overcooked steak, from the table. 'If you don't walk away right now,' she said sweetly, 'you won't be a 'real man' for very long.'
It took a moment, the battle between common sense and belligerent pride that raged across the fellow's face-but finally, aided perhaps by the unnatural gleam in Liliana's eyes, common sense won the field. Grumbling, he turned and shuffled back to his table, where he would tell his friends all about how he'd turned down the woman's advances.
Liliana sighed once as she lowered herself into her chair, and found herself uncharacteristically wishing that Kallist had been here to see that exchange. Damn it, she thought once more, reaching again for her mug. If it's not one thing.
'Hey! Bitch!'
It's another.
Half the tavern turned toward the large, dark-skinned fellow who'd just come stalking through the front door, his boots leaving a trail of castoff mud, but Liliana already knew precisely for whom his call was intended. She rose gracefully and offered her most stunning smile.
'And a joyous Thralldom's End to you, too, Gariel.'
'Don't 'joyous Thralldom's End' me, gods damn it!' he growled, pushing his way through a few of the slow- dancing couples to stand before her table. 'I want to know what the hell you think you're-'
They were skilled, Liliana thought later, when she actually had a moment to think; you had to give them that. She hadn't noticed them at all, until a blade sped toward her from over Gariel's shoulder.
There was no time even to shout a warning. Liliana brought a knee up sharply into Gariel's gut-she had just enough respect for him as Kallist's friend not to hit him any lower-and caught his shoulders as he doubled over, using his own weight to topple them both backwards over her chair. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't graceful, but it took them out of a sword's sudden arc with half a heartbeat to spare.
The sounds of the chair clattering over, and the pair of them hitting the floor, were just loud enough to penetrate the din. First a couple of faces, and then a handful more, turned away from dinner or dancers to stare at them; a ripple in a still pond, awareness that something was very much not right spread through the Bitter End.
Liliana gasped as the wooden edge of the seat dug painfully into her side, but she didn't let that stop her from rolling. Their bodies tilted across the chair like a fulcrum, her head striking the hardwood floor, but that, too, she ignored as best she could. Twisting her grip on Gariel as they fell, she kept him from landing squarely atop her. She left him gasping on the floor as she scrabbled swiftly to her feet, trying to keep the table between herself and her attacker. No. Attackers, plural. Damn.
They were strangers here, certainly. Avaric was small, yes, but not quite tiny enough for everyone to know everyone else by sight. From a distance, then, these two blended perfectly, both of roughly average height, both clad as workers gone out to hoist a few after a long day's work, before going home to hoist a few more. But up close, their cold, emotionless eyes marked them as something else entirely.
Well, that and the heavy, cleaver-like blades.
They advanced unhurriedly, even casually, one passing to each side of the table. Clearly, despite the speed of Liliana's evasion, they didn't expect much in the way of resistance.
And in terms of anyone coming to Liliana's aid, they were correct. The folk nearest her had only just begun to run, to scream, or to freeze in shock, as best befit their individual temperaments. From behind the bar, Ishri emerged with a heavy cudgel in hand, but hampered as she was by the bulk of the crowd retreating from the coming bloodshed, there was no way she'd reach the table before it was all over. To his credit, the suitor whom Liliana had just rebuffed was also making his way back across the tavern, fists raised, but he was already so drunk that even if he managed to reach the fray, it was unlikely he could meaningfully contribute.
But then, Liliana didn't require anyone's help.
Crouching slightly, she shifted the dinner knife-hardly an intimidating weapon, but all she had-into an underhand grip. Beneath her breath, her lips barely moving, she began to utter a low, sonorous chant. Across her neck rose an abstract pattern of tattoos that suggested even more elaborate designs farther down her back, as though burned across her skin from the inside out.
Had they been able to hear it over the ambient noise of a panicking tavern, that sound alone might have given her attackers pause. The tone was surreal, sepulchral, far deeper than Liliana's voice should ever have produced. The syllables formed no words of any known language, yet they carried a terrible meaning that bypassed the mind entirely, to sink directly into the listener's soul.
But they could not hear it, those deluded fools who thought themselves predator rather than prey. And even if they had, it would have been far too late to matter.
As though biting the end off a leather thong, Liliana spat a word of power into the sether, gestured with her blade. Something moved unseen beneath the table, just one more shadow in the flickering lanterns of the Bitter End, summoned from abyssal gulfs beyond the realms of the dead themselves. With impossibly long fingers it stretched out, farther, farther, and brushed the edges of two of the table's legs. Rotting away as though aged a hundred years, in single instant, they folded in on themselves, putrefying into soft mulch. The rest of the heavy wood surface toppled to the side, slamming hard into one of the bandit's calves. He cried out in pain, stumbling and limping away from the unexpected assault, a handful of dishes and a half-eaten loaf of pumpernickel bread clattering around his feet.
At that cry, the second man's attention flickered away from Liliana for less than a heartbeat-but that was enough. Ducking in low, she drew the edge of her knife across his extended arm. Cloth and flesh tore beneath the serrated steel, and the bandit barely muffled a curse of pain behind clenched teeth.
