6: Old-Fashioned Hospitality

CYRENE WAS THE CLOSEST. She saw Lief sagging, and the spider-creature Enth cowering at the altar. For a moment she thought that the monster had attacked the thief—it would be the confirmation she had wanted, the thing she wished to believe. Even as she barreled in, she saw that it was the monks who had crossed the line: Enth was pinned back by Abnasio’s symbol of Armes, incapable of anything. At that point, she had not spotted the dagger hilt or the spreading stain of darkness that was growing about it. She did not register how serious the wound was.

“Take the creature!” the lead disciple of Gamograth roared. “Take the creature and clear the room of these heretics!”

“What have you done!” Dion cried, and there was another thunderous detonation of Penthos’s magics. It was not yet clear whether the balance of power would allow Abnasio to clear the room of them or not. Cyrene decided she could not wait to find out.

A monk tried to get in her way just as she was pressing forward, and she put his nose to the test with her elbow and found it wanting. Even as he was reeling back, sneezing blood, she hooked a foot behind his knee and then stamped on the closest part of him as she trampled over him. It was only the shoulder, far from ideal, but it kept him out of the way. There were another couple of monks in between her and Abnasio, but they were moving in on Harathes, who was making his own inroads. Cyrene stepped behind them neatly and punched one in the back of the neck. When the other one turned to see what had befallen his comrade, she had already stepped into his shadow, keeping at his back like some sort of slapstick routine, and she put a knuckle in his ear with considerable force. Then she turned back for the main event and saw at last that Lief had been stabbed.

Her own dagger was out on the instant, and it was very much within her mind to find out whether the chosen of Gamograth had the same arrangement of internal organs as other men. In a life colored by a number of wicked acts that she was trying to atone for, she had never yet killed one of the clergy of Armes. Right then she fully intended to remedy that score.

She lunged in, and an acolyte blundered into her way, knocking aside her thrust and getting viciously backhanded across the face for his pains. Abnasio only noticed her at that late stage, and his eyes were wide as he raised his hands to stay her.

“You fools! We do the work of Armes—!” he got out, and then her next slash hacked across the palm of one hand and knocked the golden disc out of the other.