The Shattered Mask (28 page)

Cant was the secret patois of the most professional of thieves, useful both for confounding eavesdroppers and as a means of mutual recognition. Shamur had mastered it in her

youth, and still remembered most of it though she hadn’t had occasion to use it since her displacement in time.

“You’re damn right, copesmate,” she said. “Of course, Shamur talks Cant. She pledged to Mask when she was only a rumpscuttle lass, before any of you flicks and ferrets were even born. She’s practiced the figging law, nipping purses with a cuttle-bung. She’s been a charm and a cony-catcher, a foin, a padder, and a prigger of prancers, a warp and a stall. Later, she married that gentry cove there.” She jerked her chin at Thamalon, currently standing battered and helpless in the grip of two of his captors. “But slipping on his fambling-cheat didn’t change what Shamur was inside.”

“You’ve led a colorful life,” Avos drawled, “but so what? Did you think we’d spare you just because you were once a fellow rogue? Not likely!”

“I was more than a rogue,” Shamur replied. “I was a Quipper.”

The bravos and doxies babbled to one another. Avos said, “Nonsense.”

“It was more than thirty years ago,” she replied, “before your time or that of anyone in this hall.” And since she was lying, thank the gods for that! “But I can still give the sign: Sharp eyes, sharp blade. Still tread, still tongue.” In her mind, she blessed the lovesick, drunken Quipper who had once whispered the gang’s secret protocols in her adolescent ear.

Some of the blackguards were visibly impressed by-tier recitation. Avos simply scowled and said, “I still don’t believe you were ever one of us, but if you were, you’re now a traitor for slaying some of your own brothers, and we have even better reason to hurt you.”

“I slew them in self-defense,” Shamur said, “as our rule permits. But we don’t even need to debate that, and I’ll tell you why. We say, once a Quipper, always a Quipper, do we not? Even death can’t break the bond; the shades of our predecessors are waiting to welcome us into the chapter of the brotherhood they’ve established in Hell.”

Avos grinned. “Then if you’re telling the truth, you’ll be seeing them soon.”

“Not necessarily,” Shamur replied, “because it is likewise our tradition that any of our members accused of wrongdoing has the right to demand a trial by combat against the chieftain of the gang, and go free if he prevails.”

The big man laughed. “You want to fight me?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do it, captain!” someone shouted. “We haven’t watched you scrap in a while.”

Shamur could see enthusiasm for the idea running through the crowd like a fever. In all likelihood, a number of the rogues simply craved the spectacle of a bloody duel. Some seemed to think it a splendid joke that the slender captive would think to challenge their enormous and no doubt formidable leader. While others, perhaps, wanted to see Avos annoyed and inconvenienced, because they still resented his indifference to the slaying of their fellows, or disliked his bullying ways in general.

“Don’t be stupid,” Avos said to his followers. “The wench is lying. How many female Quippers have there ever been? Damn few!”

“She knows Cant and the Quipper signs,” said Garris, and then flinched when Avos scowled at him.

“Who cares if she was a Quipper or not?” cried another ruffian. “Let’s have a little sport!”

“Yes,” Donvan said ironically, “why not? After all, Avos, if you can’t defeat a female, we’re better off without you.”

The blond hulk snorted. “All right, mates, if that’s how everybody wants it, I suppose it doesn’t matter if Lady Uskevren here”—his sneering tone turned the title into a mockery—”dies quickly. It’s her man I truly want to pick apart, just as he’s the package our associate will really want to buy. But I can’t promise you much of a show. Not only is the prisoner a woman, she’s well past her prime.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the Quippers I’ve already killed thought that very same thing,” Shamur replied. “Give me back my broadsword, and I’ll do my best to make our contest as interesting as possible.”

Avos sneered. “If you truly were a Quipper, you should

remember that in a duel like this, he who was challenged has the choice of weapons.”

In fact, Shamur hadn’t known, and now she felt a twinge of apprehension. “Oh, of course,” she said lightly. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’ll show you,” he said.

Avos snapped his fingers, gave the galltrit a final caress, then set the creature gently on the arm of his chair. As he rose and stepped down from the dais, one of his underlings hurried up with two unusual sets of weapons, each composed of a short sword and a fishing gaff, a sturdy, four-foot shaft of wood with a barbed steel hook at the end.

Shamur had never heard of anyone fighting with such a tool. She wondered if Avos had invented this particular mode of combat, and was its sole master. That would certainly tilt the odds in his favor whenever any of his fellow Quippers dared to challenge him.

“Look them over,” Avos said, “then choose the ones you like.”

She took him at his word, hefting the weapons to check their weight and balance and finding little to choose between them. She settled on the gaff that was a hair lighter and the short sword with the narrower, sharper point. “These will do,” she said.

“Good,” he said. “Now, just so we’re clear: Your husband doesn’t claim to be a Quipper, and even if a god reaches down and smites me, which is about the only way 1 can see you winning, Thamalon stays with us.”

“Fair enough,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

“After you, milady.” He waved her toward a circle sloppily painted on the concrete floor. Judging from the rusty stains inside it, it had served as a dueling arena on a number of previous occasions.

Shamur and Avos took their places at opposite ends of the ring. The other ruffians crowded around its border. Garris, assuming the director’s role, declared, “The fight will continue until one duelist yields or is unable to continue. Fighters, come on guard.” Shamur copied her opponent’s

stance, slightly crouched, with the gaff in the lead hand. “And … begin!”

The two combatants circled, sizing one another up, looking for openings. Shamur was likewise trying to figure out how one fought with this particular set of weapons. The essential principle seemed clear enough: Use the long gaff to snare an opponent, either by hooking one of his limbs or snagging his flesh with the barbed point, then yank him close and thrust the short sword into his vitals. With his superior reach and strength, Avos could no doubt execute all the variations on the basic maneuver very well.

Still, she could envision an effective counter. Parry her enemy’s gaff with her own, then hold the parry to keep his weapon at bay while she closed the distance, bringing them both well into short sword range before he was expecting it. Caught by surprise at such close quarters, Avos would have a hard time defending against a low thrust to the belly.

The Quipper chieftain stepped forward just far enough to flick his gaff’s hook behind her shoulder. Beginning the sequence of actions she’d devised, she parried, but her weapon never made contact with that of her opponent.

Instantly, with a quickness phenomenal in so huge a man, Avos dropped into a squat. He slipped the gaff around the calf other lead leg and yanked it toward him. Shamur kicked frantically to free herself, and by sheer good luck more than anything else, her leg came out of the hook. The point caught in her leather boot for a second, then tore free.

Now she was reeling and in imminent danger of toppling backward. Avos surged up out of his squat and rushed her, his short sword leveled at her breast. Some of his comrades cheered in anticipation of the death thrust.

As well they might, for, utterly bereft of balance as she was, Shamur could neither parry, dodge, nor attempt a counterattack. She reckoned that all she could do was finish falling, and so she endeavored to do so as quickly as possible, hurling herself down to the cold, hard concrete floor.

As she’d hoped, Avos blundered right over the top other. She tried to hook his ankle with her eaff before he could

wheel back around to face her, but she missed.

She grinned as she scrambled back to her feet. Sometimes, for some perverse reason, it struck her funny when she cheated death by a hair, and this was one of those occasions.

“Very good,” she said to Avos, “you nearly had me. But I think I’m starting to get the hang of this game. Feint, deceive, then attack, just like in ordinary fencing.”

He sneered. “Got it figured out already, have you?” Advancing, he swung his gaff like a war club, whipping the head in a backhanded strike at her face.

She stepped back out of distance and kept on retreating around the circle, counterattacking and riposting vigorously enough to keep him from pressing her as hard as he might have otherwise, but essentially remaining on the defensive while she waited for him to use the same high feint, drop, and hook to the leg he’d tried before. She reckoned it was only a matter of time. The combination had almost won him the fight. Eventually he was bound to try it again. She just had to stay alive until he did.

Actually, that wasn’t turning out to be an enormous problem. He was discovering the same thing she had learned while chasing Thamalon about the clearing. It was difficult to hurt an opponent who constantly gave ground. Indeed, she began to enjoy thwarting him, and grinned at the frustration in his ruddy, sweaty face and porcine eyes’.

At last he threatened her shoulder, and her instincts told her he was attempting the compound attack she wanted him to make. She parried anyway, to convince him the trick was working and to protect herself in case she was mistaken, and he dropped to one knee. His gaff swept at her leg.

Having anticipated the attack, she hopped to one side and easily avoided it. Before he could come back to any sort of guard, she lashed her own gaff at his head.

She meant to set the barb in his flesh, but, perhaps because of her unfamiliarity with this peculiar weapon, that didn’t happen. Still, clanking against his skull, the steel hook split open his scalp.

The spectators roared. Shamur aimed her short sword and lunged. Avos blindly swept his gaff up in a blow that, though it failed to connect solidly, brushed her back and gave him time to lurch to his feet.

Blood streamed from the scalp wound, trickling down the ruffian’s face. Shamur relished the sight of it, and his shocked expression even more so.

“I told you I was getting the hang of it,” she said.

Avos shouted and rushed her. She retreated, waiting for the right opportunity, and, thirty seconds later, bashed him again.

- Sr s

Thamalon supposed he should have been too concerned about the fundamental question of their survival to dwell on lesser matters, but once again, as at other moments during the past two days, he found himself marveling at Shamur’s deportment in the face of danger.

The Uskevren lord had done plenty of fighting during his long and turbulent life. He liked to think he had seen it through with reasonable fortitude. But while he had certainly savored his victories, and taken pleasure in fencing and jousting for sport, he had never enjoyed the actual experience of mortal combat. That chilling awareness that if his opponent proved the better warrior, or perchance merely the luckier one, his life was quite possibly going to end.

Shamur, on the other hand, clearly did delight in it. Though she must be sore from the beating she’d taken, her pleasure was manifest in her smile and the gleam in her eyes, a show of vivacity such as he had seldom seen from her in over a quarter century of marriage. Ilmater’s tears, now and again she even laughed, generally immediately after a close call that would have left many people white and sick with shock.

When he’d first learned her secret, and she’d told him she needed this sort of stimulation to be happy, he had, in his consternation and anger, assumed she was talking

nonsense. Now, however, he could see that her assertion might well be true, and sensed just how profoundly she had denied her own nature when she assumed her grand-niece’s identity.

Perhaps her love of risk was part of what made her such a superb fighter, for that she surely was. Avos was younger, stronger, had the superior reach, and possessed the substantial advantage of having trained with the odd set of weapons, yet Shamur was beating him. Thamalon was glad that, assuming the Quippers honored their pledge, she at least was likely to leave this wretched place alive.

Or so he thought until he chanced to glimpse a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye.

He turned his head to spy the galltrit flying upward toward the high ceiling. The stealthy little creature carried what appeared to be a toy crossbow in its diminutive hands.

Thamalon suspected the quarrel was poisoned. In all likelihood, no spectator would notice the tiny missile striking its target, yet the venom would be potent enough to hamper Shamur and allow the hard-pressed Avos to overcome her, win the duel by a cheat, and still maintain the respect of his underlings.

Thamalon would have liked to point out the gremlin’s obvious intent to the other Quippers, but there was no time. The rogues were focused on the duel, and by the time he managed to divert one’s attention, the galltrit would already have taken its shot and fluttered away. Nor would it be efficacious to shout and warn Shamur. The way the crowd was yelling, she likely wouldn’t hear him, and even if she did, the distraction might provide Avos with just the chance he needed to land a telling blow.

Fortunately, Thamalon’s guards were as interested in the duel as everyone else, too interested to watch him especially closely. Exploding into motion, he shoved one away, snatched the poniard from the other’s sheath, pushed him away as well, turned, and hurled the dagger.

The poniard wasn’t well balanced for throwing, but it flew true anyway, and pierced the galltrit’s breast. The bat-winged

imp gave a thin, quavering cry and fell, thudding down in the combat circle.

By that time several ruffians were moving in on Thamalon with blades in their hands and murder in their eyes. Suspecting they had at best only a murky idea of what had just occurred, the noble pointed frantically at the gray, diminutive corpse.