then another. He came out of his stance seeking a target, only to find her straightening with the knife in her hand.
Back he staggered, hopping again on his good leg as she dragged her own wounded limb across the floor after him. The knife was poised in her hand. It was a sliver of steel shining in the candlelight just beyond the range of his stomach. He shook his head to clear his dulling vision. Sweat scattered off him.
Ché backed through the door of the bedroom with Swan slowly closing the distance. She lunged at him suddenly. He was only just quick enough to sweep the blade aside. His foot caught against the prone body of Guan and he tripped backwards, shoving Swan to the side as he fell.
Gasping, he pushed himself off the floor again as Swan did the same. He managed to get a knee under his weight, then flailed his good hand around until it grasped the bed. Up, onto his feet, grunting and straining from the effort, seeing Guan’s body lying there. His balance lurched around a spinning point. His vision receded until he teetered in the darkness of his own head. He bore down on it, applying focus, seeing a crack of light appear like a doorway.
He came through it, and saw Swan coming at him with the knife.
A desperate sidestep, a slippery grip of an arm and a foot out-thrust to trip her. They fell hollering towards the floor with Ché riding her down with all his weight.
The stick of wood shot through the back of the woman’s neck with a crunch of teeth and bone. She quivered once, as though in a delayed shock, then lay there perfectly still.
A soft whine of air escaped her lungs as her body deflated.
Ché gasped for a breath and rolled himself clear. He lay for some moments with his remaining energy flooding out of him, his mind beyond thought or reason.
He had the shakes when he finally regained his feet. He looked down at the two dead Diplomats. Swan was sprawled with her face pressed against his brother’s, their bodies extended in opposite directions. They looked as though they were two lovers kissing.
‘Here I am!’ Ché spat at them with a hard slap to his chest.
In the shadows by the side of a minor canal, Ash finished his preparations and listened to the sounds of revelry in the distance. He observed the tall mansions on the opposite side of the canal, where priests walked past lit windows in suites they had made their own. Above the rooftops of the fine buildings, the rock of the citadel rose into the night air. Sasheen’s flag was still flying up there.
A window opened, and a woman threw the contents of a chamber pot out into the water. Someone was singing in the room behind her. Ash maintained his stillness, confident that he was hidden by the shadows, until she withdrew again and closed the window, cutting the song off in mid chorus.
Quickly, he removed his clothes and placed them in a neat pile beside his weaponry. Next to them sat a small wooden keg filled with blackpowder; a mine he’d appropriated from a Mannian munitions cart.
Goosebumps rose on Ash’s skin from the caress of cold air, and he rubbed his arms and legs to generate some warmth. His breath was visible in the shimmer of lantern light cast across the black surface of the canal.
The lakeweed had been shorn here to create the vertical sides of the waterway. Beams of wood shored them up further. He sat on the boardwalk at its edge then gently eased himself into the lukewarm water. It felt good against the tensions of his muscles, the abrasions on his skin, so he simply rested there for a while, near delirious with the relief of it. Beneath his feet, down in the depths of the clear water, he could see the distant glimmer of lights. He kicked to stay afloat, watching the brilliance of them between his toes.
When he felt ready, he rose up and grabbed the mine and pulled it into the water with a splash. He shook his face clear and checked the line of fuse that hung from a tarred hole in the bobbing keg; it floated out across the surface and up to the boardwalk above him, where it was tied around his Acolyte body armour, and then to a heavy portable reel fixed to boardwalk by a knifeblade, where the rest