Lin finished crossing, and Hemmit started when Dayne looked over to Jerinne and shouted something. She couldn’t hear, but his face told her everything. She spun about, shield and sword out.
At least a dozen people, all in dark robes, carrying blades and cudgels. Jerinne stepped forward to put herself in front of Maresh and Lin. Hold these people off. Give Dayne a chance to cross. Protect the others.
Four of them came pounding on Jerinne. She blocked with her shield, parried with her blade, dodged and ducked, but while she was able to avoid getting hit, she couldn’t press them away, couldn’t get a shot back at any of them. Holding them off was all she could manage.
“Dayne!” she called out. She risked a glance across the river.
Dayne wasn’t waiting, charging out onto the bridge while Hemmit was still part of the way across. Jerinne couldn’t keep her focus on that; she had to keep fighting off these robed people.
A thunderous crack filled the chamber with a blinding flash, and several of the figures stumbled away from Lin. Lin swooned, and while Maresh caught her before she hit the ground, the robed figures grabbed the two of them.
“No!” Jerinne shouted, slashing out with her blade. She caught the robe of one of the men, tearing it off.
He wasn’t a man.
She didn’t know what he was.
His head was tilted to one side, and his face looked like it had poured off onto one shoulder; like his flesh had been a candle, half melted down. And his skin—purplish-brown, covered in boils.
Jerinne screamed and smashed him in his misshapen face with her shield. She had to get to Lin and Maresh, who were being dragged away. Maresh struggled vainly; Lin looked like she had no fight in her. Jerinne had to get to them, had to save them. She took the blows coming from the beasts, hitting back hard and fierce.
“Dayne, I need you!” she called.
“I’m—” Dayne shouted. One of the robed horrors charged onto the bridge into Hemmit, and the two of them fell back onto Dayne. One of the ropes holding up the bridge snapped, and the whole structure flipped. In a moment, Hemmit, Dayne, and the robed figure tumbled into the rushing water. A moment later they were swept out of sight.
“Dayne!” Jerinne shouted.
Three of those beasts grabbed her, but she was not about to let them get hold of her. Savagely, without grace or form, she spun on them and slashed with her sword. They pummeled at her, but she didn’t care. Days and days of training with Vien and Amaya, pushing her body to its limit, had made pain a familiar companion. She pushed through it, ignored it. She didn’t care about the fist crossing into her jaw, and she returned the blow twice as hard. She couldn’t do any less. She had to stop these monsters, put them down.
She hammered one with her shield while driving her sword into the gut of another. She pulled out the blade and cracked it against his skull. Then again. One more grabbed her arm and she paid that back by snapping it clean with a blow from the shield. Then a kick to the knee, dropping him. Then another to the skull. And another.
And—
That was it, he wasn’t moving.
None of them were.
It was just her, with four of those beasts dead at her feet.
Just her.
Everyone else was gone. Hemmit and Dayne swept off in the river, and Maresh and Lin dragged away by these horrors.
She closed her eyes briefly and offered prayers to Saint Julian and Saint Benton, to watch over Dayne and Hemmit. She had to trust they’d be well, that she couldn’t do anything for them.
Lin and Maresh needed rescuing. That was her duty, and she would not fail it.
Not again.
Chapter 10
AMAYA WENT TO SEVEN BARS along the Trelan Docks, asking about where to find a fellow named Braning. This mostly resulted in a few steves and skells offering to buy her a drink, or to show her what a real man could do. The first four bars were a complete waste of time. At the fifth, one man said he could tell her where to find Braning if she could beat him in a strong-arm, which she did rather easily. He claimed she had cheated, and after pressing, admitted he really knew nothing about Braning.
At the sixth bar, one old fellow told her she was going about it all wrong. He said that since the man she was looking for was a sewer man, she shouldn’t be going to dock man bars, she needed to go to a brick and pipe bar. He told her to go to the Bitter Candle Pub, two blocks away from the river. She thanked him and paid off his tab, since he had been the only decent sort she had met in those six bars.
The Bitter Candle was the seventh bar, and it was definitely a place frequented by men who worked in the sewers. The place had a rank air to it, accented with the subtle notes of stale beer.
She didn’t want to waste much more time with this. She noticed there was a bell over the bar—something for the tender to get everyone’s attention at the end of the night, most likely—and went straight to it. She grabbed the string and rang it hard several times until all eyes were on her.
“Listen up,” she said in her best commanding voice as she stepped onto the bar. “I’m not here for a drink or to find a husband, and certainly not here to take anyone home with me. I am armed and skilled in those arms, and I have had a very annoying day. So believe me when I say, do not test me.”
“What the rut you want, slan?” someone yelled. More of
