And the rustle behind her resolved into the thud of running feel, and Gilla
wheeled, fear-fuelled anger strengthening the massive arm that smacked into the
first cutpurse as he came on. He buckled with a sound like a sliced bladder, and
a knife glittered through the air to rebound with a tinny clatter from the
nearest wall. Gilla brought her other fist down on the man’s head and waded into
his companion before he quite realized why his point man was down; she
belaboured his ears with all the obscenities that a lifetime on the edge of the
Maze had taught her as she put her full weight into her blows.
The blood was singing in her veins and most of her fear had been washed away by
adrenalin by the time Gilla dusted herself off and resumed her progress. Behind
her two battered figures stirred, groaned, and subsided again.
That martial energy carried her all the way past the last of the carpetmakers’
shops and the stares of their owners, rolling up their wares now as the sun
descended and painted the city with its fiery glow. It carried her all the way
to the door of Enas Yorl.
But there she halted, her eye mazed by the sinuous swirl of brazen dragons that
adorned it, her hand on the chill metal of the knocker, not quite daring to let
it go. All the tales she had ever heard of the sorcerer yammered at her in the
voices her children had used when she told them what she meant to do.
What am I doing here? Who am I to meddle with wizards? The voices were gentle,
reasonable, and then, from some deeper part of her being came the thought: Lalo