He didn’t respond to the incitement. Siora marveled at the nimbleness with which he moved. Even a street made slick with wet horse manure didn’t make him slow, and she could only imagine how quick he’d be without such a challenge. Her heartbeat pounded in her chest, and she glanced at their surroundings, peering into the obscuring shadows for the other would-be assassin to come flying out of the dark to join the fight.
The two men seemed equally matched, quick and deadly, their blades glimmering in the moonlight as they lunged and parried, attacked and retreated. It was a dance, a deadly one, with survival reliant on strategy and speed. And surprise. Gharek proved the second when he suddenly feinted toward his opponent’s blade, taking a shallow slash on the arm as reward. But the unexpected move made the other man slip. His dexterity compromised, he lost his footing, and Gharek seized his chance. Another nimble twist of his body, and he was suddenly behind his would-be assassin. Siora flinched as his blade slid across the other man’s throat and blood spurted down the front of his tunic. He was dead by the time Gharek let his body drop to the ground.
Her heart surged into her throat when he left the dead man where he lay and bolted toward her, bloodied knife gripped in his hand. He clutched her arm. “Hurry,” he said as he pulled her toward the abandoned brothel’s door. “That piece of shit will be joined soon enough by his partner.” He kicked the partially open door all the way back and hauled Siora inside with him.
The building was an empty shell, a carcass hollowed out by scavengers, its remains left to decay under the ravages of time andthe elements. With her eyes now adjusted to the dark, she could make out a few sticks of furniture too rickety for any use other than firewood. Cobwebs garlanded the ceiling and walls, and she caught glimmers of moonlight casting pallid spears through holes in the roof. Dust whispered under her feet and rose in choking clouds as Gharek strode toward a staircase tucked away at one end of the room.
“Pray we find better luck in here than we did out there,” he said, and climbed the staircase.
“Where are we going?” She spat out the taste of dust swirling around them.
“This is—was—one of the entrances to the Maesor.”
“I thought there was supposed to be a guardian who didn’t let people pass without permission.” She’d never been here herself, but she’d heard access to the Maesor wasn’t given easily or lightly.
“Usually there is, but who knows now.”
They reached the last stair and a landing that led to a long corridor. Gharek halted so abruptly that Siora nearly cannoned into his back. The corridor on the second floor reminded her of the layout in the Blue Rat. A long hall with doors on either side. But there the similarities ended. Instead of a wall and discreet servant’s stairs at the hallway’s other end, she stared at what looked like a hole or doorway punched into the back wall, its edges a rotating ripple of air and its center an open door or gate offering a glimpse of structures and a strangely citrine-colored sky.
“No guardian but still a gate,” Gharek said.
A loud bang from the door downstairs made Siora whirl to stare back the way they came. She couldn’t see anything, but every nerve in her body sizzled with warning. She glanced at Gharek, whohadn’t startled like she had. He raised the hand still gripping the knife. Blood trickled down the blade to ribbon across his knuckles. He raised his index finger and pressed it to his lips to signal silence. She nodded when he pointed to the spinning gate. A faint scrape of a footstep sounded below them. The Maesor ahead of them, a new assassin below them. It wasn’t a difficult choice.
Gharek’s free hand slid from her arm to clasp her hand. “Run,” he mouthed.
They raced down the hall and, without pausing, hurled themselves through the gate. Siora’s stomach vaulted into her rib cage at the sudden disorientation, as if some great and invisible hand had flipped her upside down several times, then spun her around and around for good measure. Thank the gods for Gharek’s steadying grip or she might have fallen to her knees when they emerged into the Maesor.
“All right?” he asked as she leaned against him for a moment to let her stomach settle.
“I will be.”
“Even if you hadn’t told me you’d never visited the Maesor, I’d have known it. The gate causes seasickness but only the first time you cross.” She wanted to ask him why but didn’t get the chance before he pulled her along with him down a long street lined on either side by stalls for as far as the eye could see. “Come. We need to make ourselves scarce in case our pursuer chooses to follow.”
They darted into a side avenue. It too revealed more stalls packed with goods that encroached upon the traffic path and hung from tent poles for better visibility. All stood under a yellow sky blanketed in a murky orange haze that no sun shone through. The yellow itself wasn’t the warm color of day she was used to but anacidic shade toned down only by the smoky film covering the sky. No sun, no clouds, and as Siora gazed around her at the sprawling Maesor with its black-market sorcerous goods, no people either.
They waited outside an empty stall, watching the gate, which from this side looked to Siora like the rippling surface of a mirror. Instead of showing the corridor of the abandoned brothel, it reflected back the Maesor and its yellow sky.
Gharek stood in front of her, tense, ready to face a second assassin coming through the gate. Several moments passed in funereal quiet but no one emerged from the other side, and the rippling mirror remained undisturbed. He glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll be followed. Someone must have heard the same rumors in Domora’s marketplace and chose not to risk a visit.”
Siora shivered despite the ambient temperature. Neither hot nor cold here. No sun and no breeze. No people and no sounds except for her and Gharek’s voices. Instinct warned her to keep her voice low. “Can you blame them? There’s a wrongness here. Do you sense it?”
“Beyond the fact that it’s completely empty of people? Yes.”
She scanned the many stalls, all full of goods left as if frozen in a moment, nothing ransacked or looted. She’d never seen the like. Even graves weren’t safe from thieves. “What happened to everyone?”
Gharek shrugged and stepped out of their hiding place, still keeping a wary eye on the gate. “That is an excellent question and one we can’t answer if we linger here.” He motioned for her to follow him. “I doubt he’s here, but if anyone can tell us what happened, it’s Koopman.”
They returned to the market’s main avenue. The stillness waseerie, a living thing that observed them from every shadowed stall and alley they passed. The hairs on Siora’s nape rose and remained standing. She’d faced raging spirits, malevolent ones that made her grateful she’d never met them while they were still living people, battlefields swarming with ghosts, houses crowded with whole families of spirits not yet ready to leave this world—all of these she’d seen and experienced. This though was different, its strangeness making her feel as if something fundamental to her soul had shifted the tiniest bit, changed in a way she didn’t understand but definitely didn’t like.
They stopped in front of a large, lavish tent. There were no goods displayed at the entrance to entice a customer to step in and see what else the vendor sold, only a plain stool next to a forgotten walking stick.
“A blind guard who saw better than most and his dog always perched here,” Gharek said. His mouth thinned to a grim line and Siora’s alarm ratcheted even higher when he unsheathed a second knife. “Don’t ride my heels. I need the space to fight if needs be,” he told her. “But don’t wander off.”
Gharek slowly eased into the tent, announcing his presence in a casual voice. “Koopman, you’ve a customer. Your guard’s gone missing from his station so I came in.”
No one greeted his announcement from the tent’s depths. Once Siora’s eyes adjusted to the interior’s dimness, she got a good look at its contents. This Koopman person was a textiles dealer judging by the number of carpets and tapestries piled on the floor or displayed on hanging racks. Such ordinary goods seemed out of place in a market known for selling demon bowls, curse scrolls, forbidden grimoires, and potions that actually worked.
“Don’t touch anything in here,” Gharek warned her as they moved cautiously through the shadowed tent.