She snorted. “You beat him barehanded while he had a sword. His men just watched him.”
“So he’ll hit me when I’m not ready. And I’m not the only one who’ll be caught up in it.”
“That’s why you hired more guards. Let’s talk to Dualayn. He has friends. Your boss is one. Why don’t you talk to him? Ust’s his dog. Grey can leash him, right?”
“I don’t know where Grey is.” Ōbhin rolled his shoulders, rattling his mail coat. He felt the fog bleeding through it, the night growing chill. “He’s using Ust right now for some operation. They assassinated the high refractor.”
“What?” Avena’s hand flinched back. “You’re certain?”
“No, but Handsome Baill is an expert marksman. He could have been on another building and shot the high refractor. Framed the city guards.”
“See, we need you.” She grabbed his gloved hand and lightly tugged, turning him. Something foul filled his nose as he glanced at her. A reek of rot and decay permeated the garbage strewn alley. The fog glowed behind her, eddying in currents. “You know Ust and Grey. If the Brotherhood is causing problems in Kash, creating riots, we need your help. What do you say?”
He didn’t know how to answer as he stared at the shadow of her face. He could just make out her eyes against the brightness flooding around the corner. What was he truly afraid of? Ust? She was right. The man wasn’t a real threat. If his bandits attacked, Ōbhin and the other guards could repel them.
He feared himself. How he acted. He was such a coward he hadn’t been able to face the truth about the woman he’d loved. He’d denied it so much, he’d planted a dagger in a good man’s heart out of childish refusal to face reality.
What if he did it again?
Her thumb stroked the back of his stained glove like she was polishing a diamond. He teetered on a precipice, and he didn’t know if he should jump or stay on the cliff’s edge. If he stayed, his path was clear: kill Ust and march back into the darkness.
What lay at the end of the leap?
Before he could answer, a door burst open inside. His head turned out of reflex to see through the window Ust enter the inn’s back room, his dark hair knotted in greasy curls, his beard matted with dried stew. He filled the doorway, broad and muscled. His eyes fell on Creg.
“Well?” Ust growled as Ōbhin pulled his hand from Avena’s and seized the hilt of his sword.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Avena’s now-empty hand closed as Ōbhin’s face changed. His thumb stroked along the emerald. He stepped back from the tavern’s wall, falling into a fighting stance. She could hear Ust inside. Twisting fear skittered through her. She took a step back as Ōbhin’s blade whisked out from its sheath. The emerald hummed to life.
I’ve lost him, she thought.
“Well, Creg?” barked Ust from inside.
“I did what you wanted,” Creg protested. “Don’t blame me if it didn’t work.”
“Ōbhin,” she hissed as he stood there, his body still. The foul reek of garbage filled her nose, something rotten decaying in the moldering ally. She wrinkled her nose as she ignored it, the taste pervading her mouth. “It’s not too late.”
“We’re not alone,” a new voice said from inside. A cruel voice that haunted her nightmares.
She peered into the window to see Dje’awsa sweeping into the backroom after Ust. Jagged, black lightning bolts marked the dusky-brown head of the sorcerer. Five of them, three on the right side and two on the left, reached around his shaved scalp towards his face. They looked puckered, raised up from his skin. She shivered as a faint umbral shadow seemed to bleed out of the tattoos like they glowed with negative light. He clutched his obsidian wand in his hand, a drop of crimson blood running down its fluted surface.
A strangled whimper rose in her throat.
“There are two skulking in the alley,” Dje’awsa said, his voice as cold as death.
Ust glanced at the window. “Hope you didn’t wait long, Ōbhin. Took me a while to convince Dje’awsa to come tonight.”
“Ōbhin is here?” asked Dje’awsa, a cruel smile on his face. “A defiant man holds such potential in his flesh. And the other? The woman with light in her eyes?”
Ust shrugged. “She’s of no concern to Grey. I told you I could deliver. You interested?”
“Yes, yes, we are in agreement.”
Ōbhin snarled and swung his sword at the wall. The blade slashed through the rotten wood like it was stretched canvas, tearing through it with hardly any effort. He finished his strike and moved to make another when she heard the click of claws on pavement. She whirled around to see a shadow moving through the glowing fog.
The mist eddied.
“Ōbhin!” she cried in warning.
*
Avena jumped into Ōbhin’s left side. Her impact shifted him. His chainmail rattled as he rotated right. He spotted a dark shadow leaping through the fog. The smell of rotten flesh filled his nostrils. Cold fear, a primal, gibbering terror, rose in his soul.
His body acted out of instinct. He shoved Avena off of him, sending her stumbling across the alley and into the warehouse’s wall. He pivoted, his feet dragging like he trudged through a brackish mire, and struggled to bring his blade up in a guard position.
The dark form slammed into his sword arm. A dog’s muzzle snapped down on his arm, biting the chainmail. Its weight crashed into him, driving him back, his boots sliding on the damp pavement as he fought for balance.
The lean, black dog, what Dje’awsa had called a jackal, landed on its feet, jaws locked about Ōbhin’s sword arm. He felt the pressure of its sharp teeth through the mail. Canines ground on
