Framed in the doorway, at street level, stood a shyk, an army commander, resplendent in twin ostrich plumes, gold breastplate, and a red kilt with gold buttons. Two servants in paler uniforms trailed.
The shyk's parade ground bawl brought every soldier to rigid attention. Tafir straightened as he'd been drilled for three months to do, though he felt foolish nudging a big sergeant atop a beer-stained table. Even civilians dared not move and catch the officer's hot-eyed glare.
'Look at this hole! Look at you men!' The officer stamped down stone steps. 'You're a disgrace to the bakkal, may we exist only to further his reign. You fools, get off that table. Just because you're off-duty is no excuse for slovenliness…'
Abuse was piled on the big sergeant, who was obviously known to the commander, but the severest acid rained on the army's newest cadet, Tafir.
'… fail to understand the gravity of your role. As an officer in training, you are forbidden to lay hands on a soldier lest you take advantage of your higher rank. And brawling! If I ever…' On and on, to a final bark, 'That's all! The lot of you begone!'
Everyone, civilians and military alike, shuffled out the door into the early evening. White buildings still pulsed with the sun's heat, though a breeze from the eastern grasslands was sweet and cool. Sunset's golden glow cast long shadows as workers and shoppers streamed home.
Star's veil had gotten sodden and filthy, so she discarded it. Keeping her sleeve before her face, she crowded Gheqet as if whispering. The dark man told her, 'You draw more attention holding your sleeve like that. You look like a vampire.'
'People know my face.' Star pretended to scratch her ear. Her hair was jet black, cut in square bangs and woven into cornrows above her shoulders. Her aristocratic face was a vibrant bronze, her eyebrows sharp-plucked, her eyes outlined with black kohl to look bigger. Despite her simple maid's shift, passing citizens peered at her curiously.
Gheqet was an architect's apprentice with stone-rough hands and limestone dust in his dark curls. 'I should have left my work apron on,' he said, brushing at beer and avocado dip. 'Oh, here's Taf.'
Their blond friend was fair and freckled because his parents were foreign-born mercenaries enlisted in the bakkal's army. His yellow tunic and red kilt were stained and crusted.
He sighed, 'I've the brains of a bull. The commander demands my presence in his office tomorrow at dawn.'
'Ooh,' teased Gheqet, 'that's when they hang criminals. You'll be sore as a whipped camel from wrestling. Maybe you should beg a pardon from a certain princess-'
Erupting from the milling crowd, assailants struck like lightning. Gheqet yowled as a metal-wrapped club smashed behind his knee. He fell heavily, and only an upthrust arm prevented the club from creasing his skull. As it was, his elbow was crippled by a vicious stroke.
To Star's left, a female assassin sliced downward with a hooked katar, its curved blade like a crescent moon. Star shrieked and ducked sideways, tumbling over the fallen Gheqet. The clubber grabbed for her but only tore her hem.
Tafir's short military training took control. The cadet scuffed his feet to keep his balance and jabbed his bare hand flat and hard at the woman's throat. Quick as a cobra, she bobbed her head and raked backward with her hooked blade. Tafir flinched, tangled with Star's legs, and so saved his arm from being slashed to the bone. His wild flailing to stay upright made the assassin jump back. Desperately, Tafir swayed, then raised clawed fingers to fend off the next attack.
People who'd been homeward bound stopped, stared, shrieked, and pointed. A woman called, 'That's Samira Amenstar!'
Star, actually Amenstar, eldest princess of Cursrah, was the assassins' target. The club-wielder lunged over the prostrate Gheqet and snatched a fistful of Star's corn-rows. Jerked backward, Star crunched down onto her thin-padded rump and tailbone. Pain shot up her spine, making her yelp. Flicking his club, the assassin smashed Star in the stomach. Her breath whooshed out. Star sobbed, trying to pull air into empty lungs as she was dragged by the hair.
As the female assassin retreated and ran, Tafir bellowed in imitation of his instructors, 'To arms! To arms! Samira Amenstar is kidnapped! Aid the princess, citizens! To arms!'
The cadet stooped to lift Gheqet, who couldn't rise on a paralyzed knee, then ran after his other friend.
Like water spilling through a weir, soldiers charged from the crowd. Stunned citizens were bulled aside by half-drunk soldiers who'd sworn a blood oath to protect the lives of their sovereigns. Rosey was first on the scene, with Eye Patch clattering behind in hobnailed sandals. More men of action raced from the street, shouting to confuse the enemy, whoever they might be. By then, some citizens had joined the rush. Housewives clattered down stone stairways with cornmeal on their hands. Masons ran with tool bags and baskets jingling. A goose boy whipped his squawking flock aside. A fat drover puffed up, ox goad ready.
The assassins didn't flee far. Man and woman had hammerlocked both Star's arms behind her back and gripped her hair to steer. Despite the searing pain, Star saw that they aimed for a sunken stairway framed by an iron grill. Hoisting her feet, she wrenched both arms to wrap both knees. Her sudden extra weight slowed the kidnappers. They cursed and almost threw her down the stairwell, but the princess jerked free one hand and latched onto the grill work. She lost a hank of cornrows as her captors jolted to a halt.
The female killer kicked Star's hand to knock it loose, then flashed the knife before her face and said, 'Let go or lose your hand.'
Though fascinated by the curved blade, Star glimpsed a tattoo encircling the woman's wrist like a bracelet. A row of crooked crocodile teeth revealed these were hatori, assassins of a guild that emulated the fearsome sand crocodiles of the desert. Like those camouflaged and armored reptiles, hatori thugs swam below the surface of society, popped up, bit hard, then disappeared. The hatori were an undying infestation the palace chancellor had vowed to stamp out.
The male assassin gabbled at his partner in thieves' cant, but the samira interrupted, 'You gutter trash! You wouldn't dare kill me. If you're smart, you'll ru-urkl'
A garrote of braided camel hair looped around Star's throat. She gagged, gasped, and almost vomited. The cutthroat's coarse clothes rubbed her shoulder through her thin shift, then the garrote twisted as he lifted her off her feet. H[e hoisted Star on his back like a lamb, not caring if she strangled. The world dimmed for lack of air.
Footsteps pounded from all directions, but Star feared they'd be too late to prevent her strangling. Vaguely, through a red haze, she saw the female assassin snap a latch at the bottom of the sunken stairwell. She hissed for her partner to bring his burden, and Star was dragged halfway down the stairs. Amenstar shuddered and clawed wildly. Once these killers bolted that solid door, they might confound their pursuers long enough to escape-with Star either a prisoner or a corpse.
'Release her!' Amenstar heard Tafir shout, then saw the cutthroat lift her katar to fend off an attack.
Star wanted to shout a warning, but her wind was cut off. In agony, she saw Tafir leap clear over her head and down into the stairwell, obviously aiming to kick the female hatori's head off.
The woman dipped like a cobra and sliced with her curved dagger, and the knife sizzled across the hobnailed sole of Tafir's sandal. Scrambling, hands braced against the wall, the cadet poised on a step and kicked wildly to avoid the blade. Obviously, Tafir only needed to harry the enemy and block the door until help arrived. Through a fog Star saw panting soldiers cram the stairwell. Rescue was close, if only her throat wasn't crushed.
The stairwell grew darker, the light eclipsed, and Amenstar feared her vision was fading, that she was dying. Then she smelled smoke. Out of the doorway boiled black smoke tinged with green curls, as if the building were afire. From under the smokescreen charged more assassins like bees from a smoked hive.
Star couldn't track what happened next. Her captor, still with his death-grip garrote around her throat, booted her down the stairs against the oncoming assassins. The dark depths had to be a thieves' den. Star tried to grab someone rushing nearby, but the awful pressure on her throat made her sick, and she crumpled. Smoke stung her eyes, scorched her gaping mouth, and made her nose itch abominably.
The cutthroat shoved her downward. A thief banged her hip dashing one way, then thumped her again in retreating. Star wondered how her rescuers fared. Assassins, wrapped in gauze or light cloaks, flashed knives or hurled what looked like big copper coins-until Star saw a soldier's arm gashed to the bone. The coins were razor- edged quoits. The palace chancellor, who studied the methods of assassins, would find that fact interesting-if Star lived to tell it.
