21 – 3
“Frigid bitch,” the loud one slurs. It's his favorite insult for the sullen-eyed woman, said eleven times since they all started drinking and fighting. He slams his latest bottle on the table, the sound nearly drowned out by his habitual follow-up, “Think you're too fuckin' good f'me, tha's what you're pro'lem is, you think you're too fuckin'...better'n me.”
The woman's response tends to vary, ranging from a derisive, disgusted scoff to an angry, resentful, “I am! I – am – fuckin' better than you! The – the only reason you're in charge is Vance has it out for me!”
As always, there's a moment before he responds. It's not hard to imagine the smug, gleeful, and utterly sodden grin twisting his face and his words. “Shoulda fucked him too, then.”
A moment of silence, punctuated by a sharp intake of breath. The rangy one's been playing peace keeper since they started, blunting their cutting words with jokes and cooling tempers with drinks and dreams of incredible wealth. He's been successful each time, but each time it's taken him longer and longer to step in.
This time, he doesn't step in. This time, he sighs and says, “Don't kill him.”
The woman answers with a viciously pleased growl. The next thing I hear is the table being thrown, breaking glass followed quickly by a deafening crash. I flinch, biting the inside of my cheek, and the floor shakes. There's blood on my tongue as the large one cries out, “Fuck're you – ?!” before being interrupted by the woman's fist. She hits him hard, furious and without restraint, and throws him from his chair.
What comes next is a beating, one just as brutal as she gave Alban the smith. Her fists may land softer than her club, but they are thrown with a fury that her club's swings lacked. Her target – and mine – responds first with spitting threats, then with hissing insults, and ends with gasping pleas for a mercy she doesn't have. She leaves him whimpering on the floor and drops into a chair.
“What?” She sounds odd. Sated. “I didn't kill him.”
“No,” the rangy one agrees, “you didn't. Bet he wishes otherwise, though, don't you, Fishy? How's your balls?”
Through a sobbing breath and clenched teeth, the loud one – Fishy, it would seem – spits, “Fuck – both – a' you.”
Wood creaks. The woman, voice pitched high and filled with sick-sweet venom, “Only if you're offering.”
There's a huff of laughter. One of them stands. The woman? Maybe. Their feet fall heavier than hers ought, but exertion might be dragging them down. They're approaching the bar. I stop breathing. Strangle the hilt of my knife. I rise up off my knees, get the balls of my feet beneath me. Put my free hand out to keep my balance. I don't look first. I should've.
I hit a bottle.
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Not hard, but hard enough.
It clinks when my nails hit its glass.
Rasps as it rolls up onto the edge of its round bottom.
Falls.
Slips through my grasping fingers and hits the floor of the shelf. A dull, sloshing thunk splits the air. Everything – every-one – stops. The bottle rolls, shifted by the liquid within, settling slowly into stillness.
“What was that?” the rangy one asks. He's further away, near to where Fishy stifles his whimpering. That means the shadow falling over the bar belongs to the woman. If she should take but a few more steps, she'll find me. I'm hidden in shadow, but it is neither deep nor dark enough to disappear into.
She takes a step. I bring the knife out from within my sleeve. Its keen edge scrapes along the fine hairs on my arm. The surprise of seeing me, coupled with the numbness of drink, will give me a single moment in which to strike.
Another step. I see the crown of her head. Her brow. “Dunno. Maybe a rat?”
One more step. All she has to do is take one more step. My mouth goes dry, lips peeling back from my teeth. A slow, quiet breath hisses between them.
Find me or don't, Windrunner. I await you.
- - -
Sullen eyes shine with drink and, upon seeing me, are blown wide by the revelation that I am not a rat. Sweat cools on her skin, remnant evidence of the beating she gave rolling in drops down her shock-slackened face. Her hands lay flat on the bar; most knuckles bruised black, a few split and scabbing. Her tattoo – wind whirling, waves rising – is marred by a streak of blood. She doesn't move or speak, frozen in place by shock of surprise.
It won't last, not longer than a moment, but I should need no longer.
I lunge.
The knife-blade catches the lantern's light. Clean steel flashes, darts out, and digs deep. Parts skin and sinew under its edge. I smell her sweat, the drink and other foulness on her breath. I see blood welling around the knife-hilt, awareness of what I've done beginning to enter her eyes.
She shoves me away, the strength of her thick arms throwing me across the narrow corridor behind the bar. The knife comes with me, wet and red and trailed by a spray of blood, a comet and its tail.
My back strikes the wall-mounted cabinets. They rattle, the wall behind them shakes. The Windrunner claps her hand over the wound I gave her, staunching but not stifling the flow. It spills around her clenched fingers and from beneath her palm, staining her increasingly pallid skin. Her mouth moves, closing and opening without a sound come forth. I read what I can in the shape of her lips, catching only a single word: kill.
Does she mean to kill me, that I've killed her, or that the others, come to their feet across the taproom, will kill me for her?
Her blood is on my face. My hands. It's in my hair. I push away from the cabinets and rush forward; not towards her, as she seems to think, but over the bar. I slide over the top, leaving a slick smear of red in my wake. She swipes at me as I slip past, catching the hem of my shirt in a fingertip-grasp that fails to stop me. I dart out into the relative openness of the taproom. One Windrunner dies behind me. The other two block my escape.
Fishy's lip is split, his face angry and confused. “Th' fuck're you?!”
The rangy one says nothing, searching around himself with frantic eyes that – when they find nothing – move outwards, to the floor between him and I. There, where it landed after she threw the table it rested on, lay his crossbow. I dive for it. He follows suit.
He's closer. He's drunk. He's surprised, and I've always been swift. This miserable road of mine has only made me swifter.
I snatch it up. Turn it on him. Watching him stumble to a halt and feeling the weight of it in my hands gives me a sick thrill, venom and poison together. My pulse roars in my ears, hammers itself bloody against the inside of my chest. There's acid on my tongue. Bile in my throat.
He says something, does the rangy one, that I don't hear. Fishy stays still as stone with one hand pressed to his jaw, the other to his side. From the corner of my eye I watch the woman take a stumbling step towards me. She is corpse-pale now, her eyes furious and frightened; sullen no more. Her thick arm and calloused hand did nothing to halt the spill of red that now stains her from neck to navel. She manages another step. Halfway through the third, her legs give out. She brings a table down with her.
She's dying, and I've the means to kill another here in my hands. I need do nothing more than aim with care and squeeze the trigger. The bolt will do the rest.
The bolt, I only now notice, that isn't where it ought to be. The crossbow isn't loaded. It might never have been.