“Do you have a weapon, Ahrohnos?”
From within the tops of his calf-length boots, the chef withdrew a pair of short, edgeless stilettos, five inches of blued blade and guardless bone hilts. Wordlessly, he laid them on the counter, his bushy brows raised in silent question.
Neeka nodded, picked up one of the needle-pointed instruments, hefted it, then thrust it deep into the large, gleaming bun of blue-black hair at her nape. Reaching into a secret place beneath the counter, she laid a couple of silver thrahkmeh pieces before Ahrohnos.
“For the gate guard,” she told the man. “There’ll be no waiting for you to see Major Pahvlos if you spread a little silver amongst the guards. Hurry, Ahrohnos!”
Master Fahreed nodded to himself. The bleeding from the heart thrust under Neeka’s left breast had slowed to a trickle of pale pink—blood mixed with clear serum. Stepping back over to his victim, his sensitive fingers found the throat pulse. They found it easily, for it was strong.
“C’est impossible?’ In his shock and wonderment, he reverted to the language to which he had been born on an island far to the south in the hot seas beyond the Witch Kingdom.
Crouching, the physician placed an ear to Neeka’s breast for a moment, then straightened, stood and stepped back with a muttered “Merde!”
The woman’s heart, which he had so carefully damaged, supposedly shredded, with his skill and the little knife, was beating as rhythmically and as powerfully as before ever the blade had tasted of her blood. Crouching down again, he gently lifted the left breast.
An icy-cold prickling suffused his entire body and the small room seemed to be spinning about him. The narrow wound had now ceased to bleed entirely, and it was closing, healing, even as he watched!
Ahrohnos had not been gone ten minutes when Master Froh shuffled into the shop from the rear. As the cook had said, the cripple was dressed for travel—thigh-high boots, linsey-woolsey trousers and shirt, a wool scarf wrapped around his scrawny neck, a fur-lined leather cap; over the shirt, Neeka noticed that he had donned one of the several old brigandines that Master Lokos had customarily loaned to the hired bravos who accompanied him on long journeys. The armored garment might even have been a fair fit, save that Froh’s hump caused the back of it to ride far up.
Behind the shuffling little man came two bigger, normal men. Neeka recognized one of them, and her heart sank. She knew what the abominable creature was going to say even before he showed his rotting teeth in a leering grin.
“Betchew thought as how you’s gonna git away with breakin my nose and damn near pullin my balls off and get-tin me thowed inna friggin jail, dintchew, you Ehleen bitch? I thought on havin you kilt, too, but then I figgered thet wouldn’ make no sense when I might be abut to turn me a hones’ profit. Well, these here mens jus’ branged me half the money and, when we all gits to the whorehouse, Mistress Djoy, she’ll gimme the rest. And I might even spend some of it to buy me a piece offn you ‘fore I leaves this dunghill town.”
Stoo Shif, the pimp bravo Neeka had recognized, grinned too. “Dont give us no trouble, Neeka, honey. If you do, I’ll feel obliged to knock you in the head, and Lady Djoy, she’s real anxious to talk private with you, soon’s you git there.” He came around the counter and reached out for her body with both hands and, when she flinched away from him, he said in a placating tone, “Now, honey, just hold on, I ain’t trying to cop no feel off you, I just wanta be sure you aint got a knife or nothing.” He chuckled and added, “Howsom-ever, as I recal ekt, you don’t need you no knife to kill a man.”
He hooked a thumb at the other bravo. “This here’s Alik Dahl. He’s a ole Freefighter, like me, but he aint been with Lady Djoy but ’bout a year. He was hired on after a damn drunk sailor kilt ole Djimi one night.”
Neeka went quietly. After the cautious Stoo had meticulously examined the garment for hidden weapons, he helped her to don her cloak, then he and his partner followed Neeka and the grinning, chortling hunchback out of the shop and down the street toward the dockside section in which was located Djoy Skriflfen’s bordello.
Neeka made no attempt to leave a message for Ahrohnos. For one thing, the cook’s reading ability was minimal; for another, he was not a member of ee Klirohnohmeea and would have had no idea how to help or whom to approach for advice. On the other hand, Iktis was a member—a high-ranking member, at that—of the Heritage, and he would certainly be at the brothel, for Dejoy Skriffen never allowed more than two of her four goons to be absent at any one time.
Even so, Neeka’s mind was awhirl with thoughts of vengeance upon the evilly grinning Froh. From his comment about his thought of having her killed too, she was now dead-certain that he had been responsible for the fatal attack on Komees Pehtros. Ahrohnos had gone to tell his tale at the fort, but it was just possible that the wily thief and murderer, Pawl Froh, rich with the proceeds of Master Lokos’ estate, might be able to elude justice—slip secretly out of the Duchy of Esmith or even take ship and leave the Confederation entirely.
As the party left the better sections of Esmithpolis, the streets became narrower. Finally, almost within sight of the bordello, a street was completely blocked by an enormous wain with a broken axle, two huge oxen and a half-dozen shouting, gesticulating men. Stoo insisted they backtrack a few yards and enter a parallel alleyway down the length of which they could see the windowless facade of Mistress Djoy’s place of business.
When Neeka and Froh, in the lead, were but five yards from the mouth of the alley, a cur dog ran past them and began to snarl and snap at the two bravos, behind. When the men stopped, cursing and kicking at the animal, Neeka saw her chance. Swiftly, her right hand went to her nape and drew the small stiletto from her hair. She allowed Froh to advance a step ahead, then jerked aside his cloak and drove the sliver of steel with all her force between his belt and the lower edge of the brigandine, deep into his left kidney.
Hissing, close to his ear, “This is for Komees Pehtros, you barbarian ape!” she withdrew the stiletto and stabbed again, and once more, nearly deafened all the while by her victim’s shrill, falsetto shrieks of agony.
Then a big, powerful hand clamped onto her wrist. Letting go of the bloody, imbedded weapon, Neeka got her slender body beneath the arm and exerted the leverage Djordj had taught her so long ago. The new bravo, Alik, whooped in surprise as his feet left the ground, screamed briefly in his flight. Then his breath left him as his body slammed down upon the greasy cobbles of the alley, the ringing clash of his scaleshirt drowning out the snapping of his neck.
Stoo Shif did not make the same error of judgment. He wrapped both brawny arms about Neeka, effectively securing her own arms, hugging her body close against his own and lifting her feet clear of the pavement. Snorting with laughter, the man proceeded rapidly down the alleyway, ignoring both the still-screaming Froh where he stood slumped against a wall and the unmoving corpse of Alik.
Chapter XV
Drawn by the screams, Djoy Skriffen, trailed by Iktis, had come out of her front door and descended the steps to street level just in time to watch Stoo Shif trot out of the alley with the kicking, struggling Neeka hugged tight to his chest.
Grinning like an opossum, he spoke when still several paces distant. “Lady Djoy, she ain’t changed one damn bit, I tell you. I searched her and me and Alik watched her ever step of the way, and somehow or’t’other she still had her a knife or got one. Give it to that humpbackted asshole three, four times, right under the loose ribs in the bastid’s back.”
“He the one what’s a-screamin’?” demanded the madam.
Almost choking on his laughter, the bravo just nodded, then gasped, “And the bugtit’ll be howling like a fucking wolf till he finely does die. It’s damn near as long and hard a death as a frigging stab below the belt. Atop of that, I think she kilt ole Alik, too. I warned him to stay clear of her, I did.”
“What happened to him?” Djoy Skriffen asked, conversationally. “Did Neeka attack him?”
The bravo shook his head. “Naw, Lady Djoy, we ‘uz two, three steps back of her and the gimpy humpback, and like I say she’d put paid to him ‘fore we hardly knowed whatall’d happund. Well, ole Alik just run up and grabbed her knife arm and then I cain’t really say just whatall she did, it all was so fast. Next thing I knowed, Alik was flying down the fucking alley and a-yowling and all and then he hit so hard I ache to think about it, I do. I think his neck is broke, Lady Djoy, mebbe his frigging back, too. But I warned him she “uz a killer.”