Chapter 26 Step Three #2
Cha sucker punched him in the thorax—or whatever that part of him was—and drew the Cinnabar sword.
It’s orange-red light filled the dim hallway and he gasped in shock.
Her punch knocked Gnome-Clerk against the wall and she angled the point of the sword at his throat.
All of it had the effect of popping him off his blockade of the cart.
Dy didn’t lose a moment, taking off running with the cart.
Clerk’s already bulbous eyes looked about to pop out of his cricket head. “Is that a Cinnabar sword?” he gasped.
“I have more than my master’s collar,” she jibed. Not really the great line she’d wanted. What she got for improvising snarky comments. Oh well. “Now, do you cooperate or do I separate your head from your carapace?”
He drew up his pointy nose—proboscis?—into a sneer. “You’re not only a mere human pet, the lowest of the low. You’re flat stupid.”
She rolled her eyes. “My mother called me stupid every day of my life and in a lot more interesting ways than that.” Another sally that didn’t quite achieve clever.
She should write some down for moments like this.
Well, her wit might not be pointed, but her sword was.
See? And that was a good line! She pressed the sword into the fae’s throat.
Er, throat-like area. “You’ve apparently chosen decapitation over cooperation. ”
“You wouldn’t dare. I’m the clerk of the Citrine Court. Even your master can’t protect you if you harmed me. Do you imagine he’d even care?”
Well, and didn’t that sting? She opened her mouth to argue the point, but it suddenly occurred to her that she might not be the only one in this little tango playing for time.
Gnome-Clerk’s round eyes didn’t roll to the side or focus beyond her—no tells from those orbs—but the hair on the back of her neck prickled and good old intuition saved her again.
Nothing like having a mother who’d sneak in a slap upside the back of your head when you weren’t paying attention to give you the instincts of a house fly.
She spun, barely blocking the blade of the fae who’d crept up behind her, and swiftly ducking the blow that came through her guard anyway. Red-orange sparks showered around her—and she cleaved the guard’s sword in half like cutting through paper.
Cricket Clerk started howling, “Guards! Thieves in the castle! Guards!”
Awesome. Just fabulous.
The fae attacking her was tall and had the reach to match.
Blindingly yellow and willowy, the fae was as narrow as they were tall, with a bladelike face sharp as a hatchet.
A wide mouth bisected their head, opening widely to reveal triangular teeth of a shade uncomfortably close that of a human’s who was raised in extreme poverty.
The stench steaming out did nothing to correct that impression.
The fae warrior wielded the broken blade like it was an extension of their arm.
Come to think of it, maybe it was. Curved and slender like a scythe, the lethal blade cut through the air with a high-key whistle, the jagged end intimidatingly sharp.
She ducked again, the blade just barely passing over her head.
Then jumped as the backswing nearly cut her off at the knees.
Something stung her back, and she blocked the Citrine fae’s broken scythe, pivoted beneath, and found Gnome-Clerk holding what looked like sharp salad tongs he’d just poked her with.
“Should have beheaded you when I had the chance,” she gritted through her teeth.
Still, she really had a thing about murder.
She was a thief and a smuggler, yes, but not a killer.
Momentarily disengaged from the yellow fae stalking toward her, she chopped the salad tongs from Cricket Clerk’s feathery paws—taking the paws with them—and ignoring his screams as he ran off.
The hands would grow back; he wasn’t dead; he couldn’t attack her back again.
Win/win.
Especially as she needed all of her attention to keep Mr. Tall Yellow and Ugly from painting the floor with her innards, even with his half-bladed scythe.
She barely evaded a swipe of the scythe at her belly, a bright sting reporting she’d been a hair too slow, but fast enough that her guts were still inside.
Think fast, she told herself. She’d better figure out how to disable and escape this situation before reinforcements showed up.
She could barely hold out against this fae.
One of their buddies would ensure her capture or worse.
And then they’d be after Dy, Azul, and Katu.
But she was tiring, her energy flagging the longer this fencing session continued. It didn’t help that she was faint from hunger and thirst. And the fae warrior knew it, a sickly yellow grin splitting their narrow, jaundiced face. They were toying with her now, wearing her out.
So she deliberately let herself flag, giving into the weakness sapping her vitality, her breathing going ragged and desperate. Waiting for her opening, she calculated her best strike. There would be only one opportunity for this.
Shouts echoed down the dim corridor, heralding the arrival of the dreaded reinforcements. Her opponent glanced that way.
Cha zoomed in under the raised sword, close enough to kiss—yuck—and struck.