No Clean Answer

The merchant lurched away from the table, ale soaking the front of his coat. He caught himself against a bench, shoved through the first opening he saw, and stumbled toward the hearth.

Rishi went after him.

He made one step.

The three men still standing at the table closed on him together.

One arm hooked across his shoulders and dragged him backward. Another body drove into his ribs. The third took his legs from under him.

Rishi twisted to keep the merchant in sight. A shoulder struck his jaw, and the room broke sideways.

He went down under their hands, among table legs, dried rushes, and spilled ale.

From the chair, Maeril saw Rishi fall and the merchant stagger.

Someone in the crowd pointed at Maeril.

“Witch! She’s casting!”

The accusation spread faster than truth.

Bowls crashed. Travelers shoved backward, trying to escape the danger before they understood it.

The house guards turned from the door and saw Maeril above the crowd—horned, hand raised, magic still bitter in the air.

No one watched the woman with the broom.

She did not hurry.

The broom lowered. Her shoulders straightened. Her weight shifted off the tired foot she had been pretending to favor.

One hand slipped into the bundle of reeds at her hip and returned with a narrow, dark blade.

Maeril saw where the woman’s attention rested: on the merchant.

Her blood went cold.

The first knife had never been the whole attack. The men at the table had never been the whole trap. The woman had been waiting for every eye to turn elsewhere.

“Look out!” Maeril shouted, thrusting a hand toward the merchant.

Bodies surged between them, barring her way. The chair rocked beneath her boots. Rishi was down under three men.

The merchant heard her and began to turn.

The woman crossed the last step between them without hurry. He saw her too late.

His face changed, stupidly, humanly, still trying to understand whether she was servant, stranger, obstacle, or help.

She caught him with one hand, almost gently, and turned him half a step as if steadying him. Then the blade moved—small, precise, final.

The merchant’s mouth opened, but no sound came. His hands rose too late.

His knees gave way, and he folded against her.

She guided his fall.

Only Maeril saw the blade move.

To everyone else, the room told a different story: Rishi beneath three men, Maeril standing on a chair with one hand outstretched, and the reek of abyssal sickness in the air.

They saw a man convulsing on the floor. They had not seen him draw the first knife.

Across the room, a fist struck the side of Rishi’s head.

Pain flashed white behind his eyes. His cheek hit the wet floor.

Before Rishi could plant his hands and push himself up, one man pinned his forearm beneath a knee. A second drove his weight into Rishi’s ribs. The third clamped a hand around the back of his neck and forced his face toward the boards.

His mouth filled with old ale, dust, and the sour stink of vomit.

He tried to turn. Nothing gave.

No base. No breath. No angle.

The hand at the back of his neck tightened and shoved his face down again. His breath struck the boards and came back hot against his own mouth.

His heart slammed against his ribs. His body jerked against the holds before he could stop it.

Every answer he knew required space.

There was none.

The weight on his ribs bore down. His lungs strained and found almost nothing. Darkness tightened at the edges of his sight.

There was no room left for form or restraint. No time to choose mercy.

Heat tore through him, white and sudden. It surged into every point of contact—the knee on his arm, the weight on his ribs, the hand at his neck.

The man pinning his arm screamed and jerked his knee away. The second lurched off Rishi’s ribs and slammed into the table. The third snatched his hand from Rishi’s neck with the stink of scorched leather.

Their recoil gave Rishi room. He dragged his arm beneath him and pushed.

His elbow slipped in spilled ale. A boot struck his ribs, but he caught the table edge. Wood smoked beneath his palm.

He forced one knee beneath him, then a foot, and rose with the radiance.

White-gold radiance clung to his skin, warping the air, steaming damp wool, and blackening the reeds beneath his feet.

One attacker lunged through it.

Rishi’s hand found a heavy clay mug. He drove it into the man’s face.

The mug cracked. The man’s nose went sideways. He folded over the bench and dropped out of sight.

Rishi straightened, breathing hard. Blood warmed his mouth. One eye watered.

Two attackers remained.

They drew their blades.

Rishi spotted a traveling staff beneath a bench. He snatched it up and struck before either man could close.

One jerked back. The other caught the staff on his blade; Rishi drove the knife aside and swept the staff back across them.

Both men gave ground.

Rishi set his feet. Now there was room to breathe.

The strike came from behind.

Maeril was still watching Rishi when the blade drove toward the soft place below her ribs. The magical wards she had woven around herself that morning snapped taut and stopped it.

The assassin’s weight carried her into Maeril, and the blade fell from her hand. The chair tipped. Maeril’s staff struck the floor and skidded away.

Maeril hit the floor shoulder-first. Her horn clipped the edge of a table, and the room flashed white.

The assassin recovered first.

When Maeril’s sight cleared, the woman was already reaching for the fallen knife. Maeril reached for her staff and found only empty floor.

The assassin seized the blade as Maeril forced herself onto her knees.

Not far enough.

The assassin came with the blade low.

Maeril had no staff and no time to shape a clean spell. She bared her teeth. Something abyssal rose bitter on her tongue.

She spat.

Green acid struck the woman full in the face.

The assassin screamed. Skin blistered. One eye snapped shut. Her knife sliced through Maeril’s sleeve instead of her throat, then fell as both hands flew to her face.

Her momentum carried her into Maeril. They struck the floor together, the assassin writhing across Maeril and clawing at her burns.

Maeril shoved at her.

Once.

Again.

“Get off.”

The woman only screamed.

Then the house guards forced their way through the crowd with cudgels.

Two struck the remaining attackers down. Others pinned the sickened man and the one Rishi had hit with the mug. Two more seized the screaming assassin and dragged her off Maeril.

A guard forced Maeril facedown and wrenched her wrist behind her back.

“Do not cast.”

“I’m not—”

Her cheek hit the floor.

Across the room, the guards stopped before Rishi. He stood with the borrowed staff between them, white-gold heat still clinging to his skin.

“Drop it.”

Rishi heard Maeril on the floor. His grip tightened. If he fought, more bodies would fall.

He drew one breath and forced the radiance beneath his skin. The air stilled.

Rishi lowered the staff and let it fall.

The guards rushed him. A cudgel struck his wrist. Another guard slammed into his side. Hands seized his arms and dragged them behind him.

Rishi let them.

As they turned him toward the wreckage, he found Maeril through the boots and broken furniture—alive, hurt, pinned, furious.

Alive.

That entered him first.

Then the rest.

Beyond the wreckage, Teren had pushed himself half upright. His face was grave. His gaze moved carefully over the guards, the fallen blades, and every person held down.

The merchant was gone from the place Rishi had last seen him.

He had escaped.

Relief entered Rishi for one brief heartbeat.

Then the guards dragged him another step, and the hearth came into view.

The merchant lay beside it, one hand open. His fingers curled slightly, as though still waiting for dice. His coat was dark below the ribs, blood spreading beneath him.

Rishi stopped breathing.

The room fell away until only the merchant’s open hand remained.

Then the murder-room from Rishi’s childhood returned in pieces: a cup filled for the wrong man, laughter turning a head, watchers waiting near the exits, and another story already prepared to explain why the blood had deserved to fall.

He had seen the trap then and been too small to break it.

He was not small now.

His hands had moved. Struck. Burned. Done everything the child’s hands could not.

Still, the merchant lay beside the hearth.

“No.”

The guards kept dragging him away.

“No.”

Louder now.

Rishi planted one foot and pulled toward the hearth.

“Let me go.”

The hands on him tightened. He needed only to reach the merchant, find a pulse, find whatever breath might remain.

From inside him, it was mercy.

From outside, it was a burning man fighting his restraints toward a bleeding body.

The light beneath his skin flared with his panic.

A cudgel struck the back of his head.

White burst through him. For one terrible instant, he was still reaching.

Then the room vanished.