They were waiting for him as he ducked his head around it, two figures with pistols aimed from the cover of opposite doorways.
Che ducked back as a bullet ricocheted off the wall. He cut a final slice from the chair leg to finish its point, then stepped partly out and launched it with all his strength at the figure still aiming its gun at him.
The gun ignited and a sudden pain punched into his thigh. Che tottered on his other leg, slumped against the wall for balance as the figure toppled out into the corridor. It was Guan, with the chair leg poking from his left cheek. His feet was scrabbling against the floor for purchase.
He saw a shadow flicker across the fan of light on the floor, and he tossed his knife into his right hand.
He launched it even as Swan came out of the doorway again and fired her pistol.
Che fell backwards with his head ringing and a pain searing along the side of his skull. Swan was down too, holding the hilt of the knife sunk deep into her hip. The woman was crawling to her brother.
‘Oh no,’ she was gasping.
Since Che was still breathing, he ignored the scalp wound and clutched his leg instead to probe it with his trembling fingers. The bullet had passed cleanly through the flesh on the side of his thigh. It had missed the bone, and blood flowed slickly from the ragged hole. He could barely move the numbed limb itself.
It was the first time Che had ever been shot. He’d been expecting it to be much more of an agony.
He tugged at the sleeve of his tunic until it tore free, and used it to tie a tourniquet at the top of his thigh. He tried to stand. Che hissed with the sudden shooting pain of it. Tried to see through the rising waves of nausea.
The Diplomat Swan was dragging her brother back into the room she’d emerged from. She paused as she strained to reach the empty gun lying on the floor. Che managed a single step towards them, and Swan gave up on the gun and pulled Guan inside.
Che stopped short, sucking air for a moment as Swan kicked the door closed behind her.
With grim determination he staggered to the door and tried to bend down to retrieve his bloody knife lying there. His head spun as warm blood dribbled down his face. His boot was filling up too. He tore off his other sleeve and used it to tie a wad of cloth against the wound itself, cinching it tight. For a moment he thought he might pass out.
‘Come out!’ he hollered, the knife heavy in his grip.
Grunts and muttering from within.
Che steadied himself. Pushed a sticky hand against the door to swing it open.
The room was deserted, though a candle sputtered on the mantel piece above a hearth. Che leaned further out. Another door lay open in the room. A trail of blood shone across the floor and through it. He limped inside and pressed his back to the wall, then slid around it towards the other doorway. A quick glance inside revealed a bedroom. Guan lay dead on the floor, his legs and arms spread-eagled. The stick of wood stood tall and unnatural from his face.
A creak behind him.
Che was quick enough to get a hand up to the garrotte as it slipped around his throat. It bit deep into the edge of his palm, and he pushed back as hard as he could, hopping on his good leg as he shoved Swan backwards across the room. Swan crashed into something, a heavy wardrobe that clattered with hangers and open doors while they both struggled in its wooden embrace.
The woman’s hot breaths hissed next to his ear, charged with fury.
Che tossed the knife once to turn it around in his grasp, then struck it into the Diplomat’s side. Once, twice, until Swan shifted and threw him sideways. Che fell, and together they crashed through a table.
Swan managed to grip his knife hand as they rolled across the floor. With her other hand she maintained the pressure of the garrotte. The wire dug into his hand and the sides of his neck, blood spilling everywhere. ‘ Is this what you want?’ Swan hissed in her hatred for him. ‘ Is this what you wanted, you kush?’
Che’s hand was a lifeless thing shoved between his ragged breathing and the garrotte’s worsening constrictions. He could barely see, barely breathe.
He reached his free hand back, felt his fingers press against her face. He hooked his thumb and scooped it viciously into her eye. The woman’s grip loosened a fraction.
Che roared and pushed against the white-hot pain from his hand as he forced the garrotte off him.
He staggered to his feet as Swan did likewise, grasping a spilled chair for support and then the mantelpiece above the hearth. He turned just as she lashed out with the garrotte. The end of it wrapped around the hilt of his knife and she jerked it from his grasp. It was hard to stand now. Swan was doing little better. Her eye was a black mess running with blood.
A blow struck his cheek, stunning him. Che shook it off as he blocked another punch, then another. He came out of his stance seeking a target, only to find her straightening with the knife in her hand.
Back he staggered, hopping again on his good leg as she dragged her own wounded limb across the floor after him. The knife was poised in her hand. It was a sliver of steel shining in the candlelight just beyond the range of his stomach. He shook his head to clear his dulling vision. Sweat scattered off him.
Che backed through the door of the bedroom with Swan slowly closing the distance. She lunged at him suddenly. He was only just quick enough to sweep the blade aside. His foot caught against the prone body of Guan and he tripped backwards, shoving Swan to the side as he fell.
Gasping, he pushed himself off the floor again as Swan did the same. He managed to get a knee under his weight, then flailed his good hand around until it grasped the bed. Up, onto his feet, grunting and straining from the effort, seeing Guan’s body lying there. His balance lurched around a spinning point. His vision receded until he teetered in the darkness of his own head. He bore down on it, applying focus, seeing a crack of light appear like a doorway.
He came through it, and saw Swan coming at him with the knife.
A desperate sidestep, a slippery grip of an arm and a foot out-thrust to trip her. They fell hollering towards the floor with Che riding her down with all his weight.
The stick of wood shot through the back of the woman’s neck with a crunch of teeth and bone. She quivered once, as though in a delayed shock, then lay there perfectly still.
A soft whine of air escaped her lungs as her body deflated.
Che gasped for a breath and rolled himself clear. He lay for some moments with his remaining energy flooding out of him, his mind beyond thought or reason.
He had the shakes when he finally regained his feet. He looked down at the two dead Diplomats. Swan was sprawled with her face pressed against his brother’s, their bodies extended in opposite directions. They looked as though they were two lovers kissing.
‘ Here I am!’ Che spat at them with a hard slap to his chest.
In the shadows by the side of a minor canal, Ash finished his preparations and listened to the sounds of revelry in the distance. He observed the tall mansions on the opposite side of the canal, where priests walked past lit windows in suites they had made their own. Above the rooftops of the fine buildings, the rock of the citadel rose into the night air. Sasheen’s flag was still flying up there.
A window opened, and a woman threw the contents of a chamber pot out into the water. Someone was singing in the room behind her. Ash maintained his stillness, confident that he was hidden by the shadows, until she withdrew again and closed the window, cutting the song off in mid chorus.
Quickly, he removed his clothes and placed them in a neat pile beside his weaponry. Next to them sat a small wooden keg filled with blackpowder; a mine he’d appropriated from a Mannian munitions cart.
Goosebumps rose on Ash’s skin from the caress of cold air, and he rubbed his arms and legs to generate some warmth. His breath was visible in the shimmer of lantern light cast across the black surface of the canal.
The lakeweed had been shorn here to create the vertical sides of the waterway. Beams of wood shored them up further. He sat on the boardwalk at its edge then gently eased himself into the lukewarm water. It felt good against the tensions of his muscles, the abrasions on his skin, so he simply rested there for a while, near delirious with the relief of it. Beneath his feet, down in the depths of the clear water, he could see the distant glimmer of lights. He kicked to stay afloat, watching the brilliance of them between his toes.
When he felt ready, he rose up and grabbed the mine and pulled it into the water with a splash. He shook his face clear and checked the line of fuse that hung from a tarred hole in the bobbing keg; it floated out across the surface and up to the boardwalk above him, where it was tied around his Acolyte body armour, and then to a heavy portable reel fixed to boardwalk by a knifeblade, where the rest of the fuse line was tightly coiled.
