Traitor though he was, for a while he would still be a Marcellan in a city that feared his name. He would use that fear for as long as he could.
Beyond that, fate would decide.
"You led them here!" the woman said, and Nophel shook his head.
They must have followed me all the way from Hanharan Heights, all day, keeping out of view and watching and waiting until…
"Malia, he's terrified!" the other woman, Peer, said.
Nophel could not look at either of them. He was staring at the window where the face had been, and he knew what would come next.
"Stop bickering if you want to live," he said. "They've come to kill us all."
Malia took control. Nophel had seen women like her in the Blades-harsh and cruel but with a discipline that meant they could focus under pressure and fight when the time came. And as she whispered orders to Peer, he started to work at his bonds.
"Back there, in the bedroom, under the bed. Weapons. Bring them all, and give one to Brunley."
"I'm not mixed up in-" the old man began, but Malia cut him off with a short, harsh laugh.
"You've been seen with us, old man. Tough shit."
Peer pushed past Nophel, glancing at him as she went by. Soon he heard the clink of metal as she rummaged under a bed in the barge's next room.
"How many are there?" Malia asked, and Nophel realized she was asking him.
"I don't know."
"How many?"
"Usually they work in fours," he said, and she glanced back at him. Was that grudging belief he saw in her? Right now it didn't matter. "They must have followed me, and whoever sent them wouldn't have risked them being seen. So, four. Any more and I'd have seen them for sure."
"What sort of a spy are you if you can't-"
"I'm not a spy, woman!" Nophel spat. With the immediate threat from Malia abating, their true position was only just dawning on him. Whoever had sent these Blades must want the people-or the person-Dane had sent Nophel to meet. The Baker. Who were they to know she was not here? Maybe they thought she was Malia, or Peer, or…
"Are you the Baker?" he asked Malia, and his heart skipped a beat. I could watch her die, and then I'd die with a smile.
Malia actually laughed. "I'm fun to be with, compared to her."
"They'll try to kill us all," he said softly.
"Yes, that's what I'm assuming."
Peer appeared with her arms full of weapons-several swords, knives, throwing stars, a crossbow, and a rack of bolts.
"They won't be heavily armed," Nophel said.
"Don't need to be with those blades of theirs," Brunley said.
"And I doubt they're wearing armor. Not if they were sent to track me. They'd have been running. Tired." He was thinking, trying to recollect anything about the Blades he saw every single day that might help them all survive this.
"Anything else?" Peer asked. She was hefting the crossbow, but it was obvious she had never fired one in her life. Her face was pale and slack, a fine film of sweat across her upper lip.
"Pull back, click, lock in a bolt," Malia said. Then she snapped up a short knife and squatted down three steps from the door, sword in her other hand, listening. "Here they come," she whispered.
"They're all right-handed," Nophel said.
As the door crashed inward, Malia dropped the knife and lobbed her sword into her other hand.
"Window!" Malia shouted, darting at the shape shouldering through the remains of the wooden door.
Peer ducked and turned, bringing the crossbow up, hoping she'd primed it and fitted the bolt correctly. Suddenly she was certain she had not, that it would misfire, and the woman shattering her way through the window-face flushed, teeth gritted, eyes glittering with a fury Peer could not fathom-would roll and bury her sword in Peer's stomach. She'd feel the warm rush of blood and see her guts spill, and before the poison on the sword killed her, she'd die of shock. So she pulled the trigger, fully expecting that breath to be her last, and someone other than her screamed.
The woman in the window slumped down and dropped her sword. Her face had changed. The fury had gone, and so had one of her eyes; in its place protruded the last third of a crossbow bolt. One of her arms flapped, thudding against the bulkhead. Her head lowered slowly and thick fluid dribbled from her face, pattering onto the wooden floor, and Peer knew it was the Blade's brains.
Peer had never killed anyone in her life. She heard the chaos around her but none of it registered. Her focus was narrowed and aimed entirely at the woman-the woman she had killed.
Malia shouted. Metal clashed on metal, and Peer was shoved aside as the Watcher backed into her. The Scarlet Blade who had come through the door pushed his way forward. Malia stabbed at him again, holding her sword left-handed so that it sliced in under his defenses. In the confines of the barge's small room, already filled with people, there was no finesse to the swordplay, only brutality. As Peer scrabbled backward and pulled herself upright against the table, Malia kicked out at the man's crotch. He turned sideways and took the kick in his thigh, punched her in the face, forced forward as he brought his sword around toward her unprotected neck.
"Malia!" Peer shouted, and then the soldier cried out as he tripped. Nophel jerked in his chair, kicking up and out with the foot he'd worked free of his bindings, shoving against the man's hip and tipping him over.
Malia drew back her sword arm, but Brunley had already buried a knife in the nape of the man's neck. The Blade hammered his feet against the floor, dropping his sword and reaching behind with both hands.
"Back," Malia said. Brunley did as told, and she thrust her own knife through the Blade's heart. "Two more." She went for the door.
"They'll be waiting for you!" Nophel hissed.
"Well I'm not getting trapped in here," Malia said. As if conjured by her words, a round smoking object smashed through another window. The curtain held it back against the sill, but a beat later it erupted in flames, fire splashing sideways and down across the wall. The flames spread too fast and gave off a pungent chemical stink.
"Flush-fire!" Nophel said, his eyes wide. Though his legs were free, his arms were still firmly tied to the chair.
Peer heard a shout outside and the clang of metal on metal. Brunley had followed Malia up through the door.
"Help me!" Nophel pleaded. Peer pulled her knife and started to cut the ropes binding him, the heat from the fire already shriveling hairs on her arm and stretching the skin on the back of her legs. As Nophel's first arm came free and she started working on the second, Peer thought she could see the wood of the chair through his wrist.
She paused, shook her head, and he grasped at her. "Cut!"
Fire flowed and wood started to crack.
She could see through his head now-the puddle of blood from the dead Scarlet Blade and Brunley's discarded knife.
"Cut!" he shouted.
"You're going," she said, still cutting.
Nophel looked at his hands, paused, then grinned. "Good." As the last rope fell away, he grabbed Peer's knife and shoved her toward the door. She crawled through and out into coolness, gasping in the fresh air. And when she looked around, Nophel was gone.