The Triumphant (The Valiant #3)(62)
Her eyes narrowed—as if she didn’t quite believe that I would just let her walk away—and she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, smearing the blood that had gathered at the corner of her lips across her cheek.
“Go!” I shouted, and sheathed my blade.
Like a deer suddenly released from the spell of the Huntress, she spun on her heel and bounded away from me down the twisted alley, disappearing in an instant. Unless Tanis could find herself a brand-new bow somewhere in the rag-end shops of Cosa before we sailed, I thought, she would trouble me and my friends no further.
But it seemed that, blinded by my own anger, I’d somehow forgotten she hadn’t ridden into town alone. Because when I took to my own heels—heading back to the wharf, cutting through a narrow alley to emerge in the open square that served as the town forum—I almost ran straight into the black-cloaked back of one of the Dis riders.
He must have tethered his mount somewhere and was now prowling the streets looking for the fugitive queen of Aegypt. In my dirt-stained cloak, with my weapons hidden and my hair tucked back under my cowl, I very likely could have passed for just a regular citizen from Cosa but for the fact that I gasped audibly when I saw him standing there, like a shard of darkness in the middle of the town square. He spun around and looked down at me. I staggered back a few steps as he drew a wickedly curved sica blade from the sheath at his hip and, without pausing for thought, slashed at my head.
I cursed my telltale reaction and dropped to my knees, throwing myself forward into a diving roll that took me beneath his blade and past his reach. I was a bit surprised that no one in the square even blinked an eye at the seemingly random attempted beheading in their midst. When I lurched to my feet and started to run—spinning a stout older woman carrying a basket of bread loaves into the path of the Dis assassin and shouldering aside a pair of merchants—I earned a smattering of shouted curses, but that was the extent of the general reaction. How often did this sort of thing occur in a place like Cosa, I wondered as I dodged a laden mule and ducked past a fishmonger’s stall. Everyone seemed so utterly unruffled by it. Not that it mattered. I just hoped it meant my pursuer was unlikely to receive any help from the local populace in catching me.
Unfortunately, he didn’t need their help. He had a partner.
And his partner was right on Kallista’s heels.
I saw the blue blaze of her cloak out of the corner of my eye and headed in that direction just as another shard of darkness—a second Dis assassin—stepped out of a doorway right in front of me, axe held high and poised to throw at her fleeing back. I shouted to draw his attention, and he turned to see me running straight for him. He swung his axe, expecting I would dodge to his left—the only space available in the narrow lane—but instead, I ducked right, and as the momentum of his axe swing shifted his body on an angle, I bounced off his armored chest, spun myself around, and kept on running after Kallista . . .
Right into a blind alley.
A dead end.
She stood there, a look of blank disbelief on her face. As if there had to be an escape path there somewhere . . . I glanced around wildly. There wasn’t. Just three doors, two of them boarded up, the last with a dilapidated wooden sign above advertising a public bathhouse. We were caught. Cornered. The first Dis assassin appeared then at the far end of the alley and joined his partner, the two of them moving languidly toward us, supremely confident that they’d run their quarry to ground. I could tell by the look in their eyes, they meant to enjoy what came next.
“I wish I had my fire chain,” Kallista murmured.
“I wish you did too,” I said as I stepped in front of her and drew my swords . . .
And then there was a shout.
The azure flutter of the queen’s cloak flashed past again—behind our assailants, who’d turned to look and now frowned at each other in confusion. I blinked and glanced back at Kallista, not trusting my own eyes either. But when my ears reported back the slap-slap-slap of dainty sandals pelting down the lane, I swore under my breath.
That, I thought, is the real Cleopatra.
And she was playing decoy for us!
I grabbed Kallista by the wrist and shouldered open the bathhouse door, shoving her through ahead of me and slamming the door shut. Outside, I could hear our assailants cursing in confusion.
“Which one is the bloody queen?” one of them asked.
“Damned if I know—pick one and go!” snarled the other. “Catch the bitch!”
There was a feeble bar lock with rusty brackets on the door that wouldn’t hold long if our pursuer got even halfway serious about opening it. I slammed it shut anyway, and together Kallista and I pelted through the dressing vestibule and into a dimly lit steam-filled chamber with a vaulted ceiling. Ghost-pale bodies, mostly naked, were splayed about on stone benches, and I did my best to ignore them, mumbling apologies for the intrusion, as Kallista and I made our way toward a shaft of diffuse light at the end of a corridor. We burst through an archway into a small courtyard open to the sky with a colonnade surrounding a pool filled with brackish-looking green water. Like almost everything else in Cosa, it smelled like fish sauce. A half dozen bathers floated about, as oblivious to the stench as to me and Kallista running around the perimeter of the pool, boots slipping on the algae-slick tiles.
“Here!” I stopped near the far corner, where the level of the colonnade roof was at its lowest, and sheathed my blades.