Dragon Soul (24 page)

But there was a saying down in Molly, and it went like this: could’ve, would’ve,
should’ve
.

“Don’t fight!” Bless was saying. “Don’t fight!”

My eyes were at least getting better at seeing in the dark again after all this night traveling. The moon came out from behind a cloud and I could see everything pretty well, in fact, and I took stock of the situation as quick as I could because I didn’t much trust anyone else to be able to. About fifteen men—maybe a few more—had come up on us, quiet as you like, closing me, Bless, Thom, and our other men in like we were somebody’s present. There was a man holding a knife to Bless’s throat and he snarled something in Bless’s ear.

“What’s he saying?” I demanded.

“He says that if you do not put that knife down,” Bless choked out, “he intends to cut my throat.”

“Tell him to go ahead,” I said. “I don’t give a leaping fuck what the hell he does to you.”

Bless looked troubled at that. “Surely you don’t mean it,” he said. The man holding the knife pressed it a little closer in under his chin and Bless made the most wonderful sound, like he couldn’t breathe, and also like he was shitting himself a little.

“You pass on the information yet?” I asked. “Go ahead and tell him there’s no fucking deal.”

“That will not be necessary,” someone new said from behind us, and I whirled around, knife at the ready, to make sure they didn’t think they had the drop on us.

I didn’t even need the moonlight to tell me this guy was their leader. Just the way he held himself made it clear, and on closer inspection the way he was dressed sealed it. His hair was longer and his face was pretty intense, and he was looking at me the way th’Esar liked to look at me—so I knew he was probably some kind of royalty. Instinct could do a lot for you in a pinch like this one.

“You are not from these parts,” my friend the desert king said. It was real convenient that he could speak Volstovic, because that meant we didn’t have to use Bless as a go-between.

“Yeah, that’s about right,” I said.

“And this man, I think, is a robber,” my friend went on, gesturing at Bless. “I do not know you, but men who consort with robbers are usually robbers themselves.”

“I’ve picked a few pockets in my time,” I told him, “not that it’s any business of yours what I’ve done.”

“Picked a few pockets?” My friend paused to contemplate this—the phrase obviously confused him—and I had to do my damnedest not to laugh. I wasn’t used to being circumspect or negotiating. Maybe I should’ve let Thom talk—but I was the one with the knife, which meant I was the one who did the talking. At least for now, anyway.

“To
eat,”
I said, making the appropriate gesture for eating with my free hand. “Money, for food. But that was a real long time ago.”

“But you travel with
this,”
my friend said, and spat into the sand.

I grinned. Now, that was something I could get behind. On a whim, I gathered up a mouthful and spat into the sand after him. “Me too,” I explained.

My friend looked puzzled for a moment, like my actions confused
him. Good; there was still a chance we could get the element of surprise back and
not
get sliced open like lunch in the desert because of Geoffrey Fucking Bless robbing other people’s cultures blind in the name of learning, or whatever excuse he was currently using.

“Who are you?” my friend asked finally.

“You first,” I said.

“Rook, I really think—” Thom began beside me, but my friend held up his hand.

“I am not embarrassed to give my name,” he said. “I am Kalim al’Mhed of the Khevir al’Mheds.” Behind me, I heard Bless make a choking noise; I didn’t think it was from anyone slitting his throat clean in two, which was a pity. “See?” Kalim al’Mhed of the whatever al’Mheds confirmed my suspicions. “Your friend knows me.”

“Hey,” I said. “That pussyfoot isn’t my friend.”

“Pussyfoot?” Kalim repeated.

I gestured to my dick and then expressed, with my thumb and forefinger, the universal sign for
very fucking small
. Kalim took my meaning immediately. I could officially say that talks in the desert were going pretty well.

“You travel with a common thief,” Kalim told me. “We call him
rakhman
. This means…‘pussyfoot,’ in your Volstovic language?”

“Yeah,
rakhman,”
I agreed, butchering the pronunciation, but nevertheless completely getting my point across. “That’s what he is, and we’re only traveling with him because we have to.”

“And you are?” Kalim asked politely.

“Uh, I’m Rook,” I said. “Of the Mollyrat Rooks. No titles.”

“Well, Mollyrat Rook,” Kalim went on, “I do not like this man behind you. Should I kill him?”

Thom made a slight noise of disapproval. I looked down at him, wondered how many throats he’d seen slit in Molly, and sighed.

“Sure, if you have to,” I said. “If he’s insulted your mother or dug up your great-grandfather or something. But don’t do it in front of my brother.”

“Rook,
really,”
Bless tried to say. Then he stopped real short, on account of somebody holding a knife to his voice box. I was liking Kalim better and better the more I got to know him.

“We will put him to trial,” Kalim said finally, something struggling
to show itself on his face. Emotion
I
couldn’t understand, but it was obviously killing him not to order Bless put down right then and there, which at least was something I could understand
very
well.

“You’ve got my blessing,” I said. “But we’ve got nothing to do with this. New to the desert and all that. We’ve got somebody we’re looking for, so—”

“I am sorry,” Kalim said, and he had the decency to actually look it. “But I cannot let you go. If you are associated with this man, then we must also take you into our custody.”

Great
, I thought. I knew that heading into this with Bless was gonna come back and bite me square in the ass, sure as piss after a night of drinking.

“Well, I’m sorry, Kalim,” I said. “Because I can’t let you do that.”

“I understand,” Kalim said.

“So let’s settle this man to man,” I told him, and indicated my knife—universal symbol for
knife fight
, I was guessing.

“Rook,” Thom said quietly. He didn’t sound like he was pissing himself, so he was doing all right as far as I was concerned.

“Keep the fuck back,” I said, since apparently that was something he was having trouble with all of a sudden.

“This is your brother?” Kalim asked, looking over at Thom like he’d only just noticed him.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s him.”

“I see,” Kalim nodded. “Well, I will have to be sure not to slit
your
throat in front of him, either.”

Thom sucked in a breath, but I just grinned because Kalim was a man who was speaking my language—and I didn’t just mean Volstovic. He said something sharply in desert talk and his men fanned out—they were pretty well fucking trained for a group of nomads—and formed a loose circle around us. I cracked my neck. This was an arena that required no translation; I’d have wagered it was the same in any country. No one left the circle until the fight was over.

I’d just have to hope I’d made enough of an impression on Kalim and the Khevir al’Mheds that they wouldn’t want to play for keeps.

Kalim shed the cape and cowl he’d been wearing and drew out his knife. It was a mean-looking thing, with a curved blade and a pale handle that looked like it was made out of some kind of bone. I wasn’t any
kind of enthusiast when it came to blades—I’d take what got the job done, thanks—but even I could tell this thing was special. Hoped it wasn’t human bone, though. That was just messy.

“If I lose,” I muttered to Thom, while someone scurried forward from the circle to take Kalim’s discarded overrobe, “give up on Bless, you got that? Gotta make some compromises. You take care of yourself and don’t try to stick your neck out for that pisser. He’s
not
worth it.”

“You don’t really think he intends to kill you?” Thom asked. He seemed pretty fucking calm on the outside, but I could hear his voice tightening underneath.

“Nah,” I said, tossing him my best grin. It was all teeth. “Besides, I’m not gonna lose. That’s some real impressive confidence you have in me.”

“Rook,” Thom began, and then, a lot more quietly, almost like he didn’t mean to say it, “John…”

“Get back in the fucking circle, Thom,” I snapped, like he was three fucking years old again and wouldn’t listen to a damn thing I said. Then I turned away, passing my knife from one hand to the other to get a feel for the weight of it. At least
this
time what I’d said took. He walked back slowly to stand between two of Kalim’s men, and not near Geoffrey, I noted, which was funny as hell. Maybe he was listening to me after all.

“Can’t we just be reasonable about all this?” Bless asked, gurgling softly when the man holding him made it clear that now was the time to shut up and shut up good.

Kalim spat in the ground rather than answering him, which I thought was a pretty fair answer, all things considered. I did the same. It was good for diplomatic relations.

“Among my people, we have a tradition,” Kalim said, turning to me again. “When a man is not fighting to prove his innocence, and between men who have no blood quarrel, we end the fight when first blood is drawn. It is an understanding that the man who bleeds will abide by the wishes of the victor. To attempt to do otherwise would be dishonorable.”

“So even though you’re not going to slit my throat and I’m not gonna beat you to a pulp, whoever lands the first scratch gets to call the shots, is that what you’re saying?” I asked, just to be clear we were on the same page. I didn’t trust him—it went against all my instincts as a
Mollyrat to trust a stranger in a fight, especially when I was fighting by the stranger’s rules—but I was kinda
almost
inclined to
want
to trust him, which was throwing me off.

“Shots?” Kalim blinked. I could’ve laughed, but it would’ve broken my concentration.

“You get to make the rules,” I clarified, and he nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “The rules. I am learning a great deal of interesting language from you, Mollyrat Rook.”

“You’ve got no idea,” I said, and just like that he lunged at me.

I’d been waiting for it. Oldest trick in the book was to talk at someone until you got them to let their guard down, and what Kalim hadn’t been counting on was that my guard was
always
fucking up, even when I was talking. Maybe especially when I was talking. I stepped quick to the right and he snapped back around, pivoting so the miss wouldn’t leave him vulnerable. He was quicker than I’d have guessed from his size, but that didn’t matter much since I was quick for my size too. Only real advantage he had on me was that he was better used to fighting in the desert, moving his feet on the sand when I was used to harder surfaces, broken-up cobblestone and the like. It was a little difference, but it was there.

Starting out, I went on the defensive, stepping back and dodging as he circled me. It was the easiest way to make out his moves, see how fast he was and which side he favored. Then, just so he didn’t start to catch on that that was what I was doing, I attacked him quick, going low when he went high and catching his hip against my shoulder. I flipped him flat on his back.

“Yes!” Thom whooped loudly, probably jumping up and down like a fucking idiot. I’d’ve thrown my knife at him if I’d had a spare, but he caught ahold of himself real quick and piped down. Better that he didn’t draw any attention to himself, or give our new desert friends reason to hold him hostage. It was one thing they were doing it to Bless, but if it’d been Thom they were ransoming, my hands really
would’ve
been tied.

Kalim twisted up quickly to his feet, checking his arms for a knife wound. There wasn’t any. Not yet. We were both respecting each other too much to end it so quick, and I’d done him some kind of honor by prolonging the fight. He grinned like the crescent moon and dove at me again, his hand a blur as I hopped back, doing my best to dodge the
sudden flurry of knife strokes as they sliced the air in front of me. I lost my balance in the sand for a second and one came dangerously close to my eye.

Dangerously close, but not close enough. Best kind of close there was.

“Tell me,” said Kalim, sounding out of breath enough for me to feel satisfied about my performance. “What is it you are doing in the desert, if your business is not with the
rakhman?”

“Looking for something,” I grunted, knocking his arm back when it swept forward.

“I hope it is something that—belongs to you,” Kalim said, rolling to one side to dodge a kick I’d thrown at him.

“She is,” I snarled, taking a lunge at him again. “It’s
other
people tryna take her from me.”

“Ah,” huffed Kalim.
“Woman trouble.”

“You could say that,” I told him. I’d been marking which side he dodged to more often—everybody had one, and there was no reasoning to it beyond simple human wiring—so I could make the next one count. The next time I dove at him, I kept my knife to the left, so that when he did that neat trick of his, darting to one side with only a sliver of space between us, he caught the edge of my knife on his shoulder.

It wouldn’t have worked if he’d been wearing sleeves—the difference was that fucking tiny—but he wasn’t. For a minute neither of us was sure if we had to stop. I was holding my knife up to defend in case he threw himself at me, and he’d assumed a similar pose, both of us waiting to know, one way or another, whether the fight was done.

Most people got nervous in that moment. I didn’t. It was exactly like being up in the air and I fucking loved it.

Then a bead of bright red formed, on his shoulder, sliding dark and liquid down his arm. A murmur went up from the circle around us—not a peep from Thom this time—and Kalim held up his knife. The crowd shut up instantly.

“What happened?” Geoffrey was asking. He was starting to sound real fucking unhinged. “Did we win?”

“This is for you,” Kalim said, holding the knife to me, handle out. He looked almost pleased with himself, which was a real funny way to look at losing, no two ways about it.