The Inn Ch. 10

"Assassin ... " I panted, "... Phurl ... blackmail ..."

"Hush, Simon, get your breath back," Leyna said, her face a beautiful soft portrait of concern.

I struggled to sit up. Cang had fallen out of the tub, apparently from a good smack or two delivered by Burgham's fry-pan. Beyond her, half the washroom floor lay puddled with water that had overtopped not only the tub but also the rim of the catch-pan intended to keep any splashes from seeping through the floorboards.

"You're telling me this witch is an assassin?" Burgham demanded. "In my inn? I was already set to throw you out for flooding my kitchen and breaking doors, but an assassin?"

Probably should have kept that bit to myself.

"Burham, he's delirious," Leyna said. It came across more as something she hoped than a legitimate explanation for my words.

From the floor, Valdazirit Cang moaned faintly.

"Oh shit," I said, levering myself over the rim of the tub. "We can't let her wake up."

Thanks to the cursed gem in her brain, Cang possessed remarkable powers of recuperation. If she came to, odds were good she could disarm Burgham, get to her knives, and kill all three of us.

"Simon, what ...?" Leyna didn't seem to know how to finish the question, but sat back blinking as I crawled across the naked mercenary and reached her knife belt.

"One of you get hold of her head," I said, pulling out the narrower of the two blades and looking for something to use as a hammer. A heavy tin of soap powder from the tray caught my eye. I grabbed it up.

When I turned, both Leyna and Burgham looked like I'd gone mad.

Cang groaned again, and one hand twitched.

I took a deep breath and tried to appear reasonable instead of panicked, as I explained, "I'm not going to kill her. She's got a cursed gem in her brain right under that scar. It's why she's a madwoman. If we don't break it before she wakes up, she'll do her level best to gut us all."

Burgham shrugged and scowled. "I'm having no part of this. She's brought murder into my inn, and you're as mad as she is, far as I can tell. Do whatever you're going to do and then I'm tossing you both out in the street."

I scuttled over to straddle the unconscious woman's chest. An unfortunate dangle of luck dropped my limp cock down straight between her tits.

"Leyna, please," I said, keeping my hands low with the knife and soap tin in them. "I need you to hold her head steady or I'm not going to be able to do this."

The serving maid bit her lip and then crawled closer, taking Cang's head between her hands.

"Right," I said. "But turn it a bit so the scar is angled straight up and the back of her skull's all the way against the floor."

She did as I said, and then I took another deep breath and inverted the stiletto above the scar, lowering it until the point contacted her skin at the center of the starburst.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. And ... one ... two ..."

On what would have been "three," I clenched my jaw and brought the tin down against the pommel of the knife, trying to hit hard enough to penetrate bone and get the tip into that gem, but not so hard as to stab through into the brain underneath.

Apparently, I blew it. Bone is pretty hard stuff, and my blow sank the knife point through her skin and a millimeter or two into the skull beneath, but no further.

Valdazirit Cang gasped and stiffened beneath me, dark eyes flying open.

"Shit!" I whipped the tin around and down again, smacking it into the pommel with less concern about whether the point went too deep or just deep enough.

This time, the tip jolted downward, rewarding me with an audible crack and vibration. A flow of green energy misted its way up out of the stab wound.

Cang relaxed underneath me.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the assassin, Leyna, and I stood in Piperville's one central street, with the Nestled Goose at Leyna's back.

"I'll see if I can convince him to let you sleep in the stables," the serving maid said earnestly. "He'll calm down over the dinner hour, and maybe later, I can ..."

"Leyna," I said, taking her hands, "I don't know what to say, except – Burgham's right."

She frowned, but didn't argue.

"I'm way over my head in things I can't control." My throat, still aching from Valdazirit's death-grip, tightened up as if to shut off the words. I didn't want to say them. But I also couldn't risk bringing another murderous fiend into her life. So I dredged up whatever I could from the muck that currently clogged my brain. "Look, unless I can figure out a solution, I'm a danger to everybody around me. Only three of my letters have had time to reach their destinations, and two of those already brought somebody to Piperville wanting to kill me."

"But I don't want you to go." She looked past me toward the middle of the street and Valdazirit Cang. "Especially not with a woman who tried to strangle you in the bath not ten minutes back!"

I glanced at Cang too. She had a bedraggled look, her hair still wet and uncombed, blood spotting the bandage we'd tied around her forehead. The straps of her leather outfit had been hastily buckled, leaving everything just a bit out of adjustment. But she managed to keep a straight spine and not butt in with any sort of defense.

"With the gem broken, she's fine," I said. That, at least, I had no doubt of. "No worse than anyone else I might run into at the Nestled Goose, anyway – and she owes me for breaking the curse. I believe her when she says she wants to help now."

The mercenary looked away as if uncomfortable. She'd been taciturn inside the washroom, once the green mist dissipated and left her in full control of her faculties. But she'd thanked me and said she wanted to repay the deed. Under any ordinary circumstances, I'd have wanted her as far away from me as possible, gratitude or no gratitude. But having written her into existence, I knew the offer was sincere, and my options didn't exactly outnumber the stars.

Leyna turned her gaze down to our hands – hers smaller, more delicate, and held in mine. "I just ..." She stopped herself, grimaced, and brought her eyes up. "You don't sound certain of much of anything, Simon. So I don't know how you can be so sure you need to leave."

The beauty and truth in those blue irises hit me hard.

Was I sure?

No, not at all. Cang had a pair of horses with magical horseshoes, and she could get me back to the capital in just a few days. There, I could meet directly with Kleburn Mandermorte and the other agents I'd sent my letters to. But what was I going to tell them directly that I hadn't already written into those messages? The fact was, I had right in front of me a potential connection to Necromanata, maybe even to the means of defeating him. And in Phaeratos, I had nothing beyond the plans I'd already set in motion.

Doubts rose up and tried to pull me back from the path that would keep her safe. I tried to get my balance back.

"Okay, you're right about me not being sure of much. My brain's probably still running at half speed from that choking I got upstairs. But if I'm sure of anything, it's that I don't want to gamble with your safety. I can't stand the idea of you getting hurt."

She stared at me, her expression wounded but fierce. And when she spoke again, the pain in her voice undid me.

"So ... you don't think that's going to happen when you leave?"

It was a gut punch.

You're feeding her a line of bullshit, I realized. You know it, and she knows it.

Leaving for Phaeratos with Cang didn't amount to any kind of plan at all. What it did do was remove the terrifying option of telling Leyna the truth – that I knew who her father was, that he meant to kill or subjugate everyone in the Phaeland Empire, and that there might be a way to stop him by digging into her past, into her memories of her childhood and her dead mother.

But if I told her all of that, what answer could I give to next question – the one any fool knew she'd have to ask?

How in the world do you know all of this, Simon?

She watched me, and waited, and I tried to figure out what to do.