the other and slicing deep into his neck, the gleaming steel cutting through flesh as easily as butter.
Corl faltered. He’d barely had a chance to move while his comrades died. As he raised his longknives, he felt his hands waver under the sudden weight. He had no hope at all of matching a Harlequin’s skill; his attack had relied entirely on stealth.
Do I have time to run? he wondered, knowing the answer.
‘What venom?’ the Harlequin demanded in a voice so calm and controlled it could have been reclining in a chair rather than engaged in combat. ‘Tell me, and you can live.’
‘Ah, venom?’ Corl’s mind went blank for a moment, then as the Harlequin advanced his survival instinct kicked in again. ‘Wait! It’s ghost centipede — ’
From nowhere an arrow struck the Harlequin in the side, the force of the blow driving it backwards a few steps, and Corl heard it gasp as it grasped the shaft and realised it was a crossbow bolt. The Harlequin sank to one knee, dropping one sword to press a hand to its side.
Corl didn’t get any closer; he had just had ample demonstration of the Harlequin’s ambidextrous skill.
‘Never send a man to do a woman’s job,’ announced a dismissive voice on Corl’s left.
He turned, and nearly dropped his knives in shock as he recognised the diamond patchwork cloak and black mask pushed up on top of a shorn head: his Wanton Woman. Of course, the last time he’d seen her she hadn’t had a large black crossbow held carelessly in her hands, or a cigar jammed into the corner of her mouth.
The woman dropped the crossbow, reached behind her back and produced a cocked pistol-bow and dropped a quarrel into it. The end of the cigar glowed orange for a moment, then she pulled it from her mouth.
‘Why?’ wheezed the Harlequin, looking up at her while blood, pitch-black in the moonlight, seeped between its fingers.
‘For what you might do,’ the woman replied simply.
Corl looked at her. She barely looked Farlan, with her cold eyes, cropped hair and scarred cheeks, but he’d seen this before. This one was a Hand of Fate - or had been, until the Goddess had died. It looked like Kassalain still had competition in Tirah; the woman’s profession hadn’t been removed with her copper-dyed hair, just her allegiance.
Without warning the Harlequin launched forward, lunging for the woman, who calmly hopped backwards, away from its sword’s tip, even as she fired the pistol-bow. The quarrel hit it just below the shoulder, its sword clattered onto the cobbles and it dropped to its knees again. It bowed its head, as though in prayer, but all Corl could hear was shallow breathing as the Harlequin panted its last.
The woman used her foot to nudge the sword out of the Harlequin’s reach before bending to pick it up. She hefted the weapon with an admiring look. ‘A thing of beauty,’ she whispered. ‘Perhaps I’ll keep it.’
She swept the sword down and the Harlequin’s head tumbled away. Its torso flopped flat at her feet as the Wanton Woman stepped delicately out of the way.
‘Double pay for me, it appears,’ she said - not callously, to Corl’s surprise, more wearily.
He bobbed his head and looked back at the corpses of his comrades. Double pay? She’s already killed one tonight? Gods, are they being wiped out?
‘Leave them,’ she ordered, ‘I’ll dispose of this one. The guard can find them and think what they like.’
‘I wasn’t told to hide the body,’ he said, returning to his senses.
She gave him a fierce grin and raised the sword. ‘If I’m taking a memento, best they don’t find the body straight away.’
With that she unclasped her cloak and wrapped the sword before fetching her crossbow. When she’d picked that up she carried on walking away, looking for a suitable hiding place, and Corl realised she was right. There wasn’t anything more to say; it was time to leave.
Anyways, the night’s not over for me, he reminded himself as he paused over the bodies of his former colleagues. Someone with a grudge against Harlequins; that makes my next job look obvious by comparison.
He sighed and sheathed his weapons. It would be foolish to linger. He summoned a map of the city in his mind and set off at a brisk walk.
The Temple of Karkarn it is, then, and all by myself now . . . think I’d better pick up a crossbow on my way.