“Go home, Garion,” she snapped, her voice sharp enough to draw blood. She sorely wished to be rid of her once friend and ally. This road was easier walked alone.
He ran a hand over his head, pulling back his hood in frustration. Sweat beaded on his pale brow, and there was a fresh sunburn across his cheeks. A northern boy, even now, Sorasa thought. Decades in the desert could not change his flesh.
“This is a warning,” he said grimly, drawing aside his cloak. At his belt, a dagger like her own glinted, with a hilt of black leather over worn bronze. He had a sword too, far too close to his hand for her liking. She lamented her own, hidden in a dingy room.
Half a mile to the inn, she thought. You’re faster than he is.
Her hand strayed, fingers closing around familiar leather. It felt like an extension of her own body.
“Would you like to do this here?” She tipped her head to the crowd of priests and worshippers. “I know you don’t mind, but I prefer not to have an audience.”
Garion’s eyes trailed from her face to the dagger, weighing them both. She read his body keenly. He was lean as she remembered. The sword at his hip was thin, a light blade of good steel. He was not a brawler like some they’d trained with. No, Garion was an elegant swordsman, the assassin you wanted on display, to duel in the street. To send a message. Not so with Sorasa: a knife in shadow, a poison on the rim of a cup. Her muscles tightened as her mind spun through her options, lightning quick. Back of the knee. Cut the muscle, then the throat as he falls. Run before he hits the dirt.
She knew Garion read her in the same way. They stared for a moment longer, half coiled, two snakes with their fangs bared.
Garion blinked first. He eased backward, his palms open. The cloud of tension between them lifted. “You should disappear, Sarn,” he said.
She raised her chin, angling her head to the hot sun overhead. The shade of her hood retreated, revealing her face. Her black-rimmed eyes caught the sunlight and flashed like liquid copper. Tiger’s eyes, the others used to say when she was young. Garion’s gaze felt like fingers on her skin. She let him see the long year written in her flesh. Bruise-like circles beneath her eyes, sharper cheekbones, a dark brow drawn tight. A jaw set at a hard, unmoving edge. Sorasa had been a predator since childhood. She’d never looked it more.
His throat bobbed as he stepped back. “Few of us get the chance to walk away.”
“Few want the chance, Garion,” she said, raising a hand in farewell.
The crowd swallowed him whole.
I’ll never get the smell of this place out of my clothes, she thought dully as she left the piss-soaked inn behind. Her pack hung at her side, the sword and whip at either hip, both well hidden beneath her old traveling cloak. Today it carried an odd scent, of salt and cattle and garden fruit, all of it overwhelmed by the smell of fish. She longed for the days when she could rely on a small, quiet, and clean room at the citadel, with cool stone walls, a high window, and the silence of ages to keep her company. Not so here.
All the better, she knew. Discord is a better shield than steel.
Sailors, merchants, beggars, and travelers alike crowded the streets of the port, slowing her down. The braying of animals and the stampede of pounding hooves doubled the usual chaos. The herds of the surrounding countries were in season, and the market yards around the port had been converted to paddocks, holding thousands of snorting, tossing, sweating bulls and cows, all ready to be bought and traded throughout the Long Sea.
She thought of the guards and watchmen up the hill, still searching the streets for a cutthroat. Checking the face of every man and boy who set foot in the district.
With a smile, she threw back her hood, revealing a set of four intertwined black braids. Her spine tingled at walking the streets so exposed, but she reveled at the feel of the sun on her face.
For the second time that day, someone grabbed her shoulder.
Again she dropped and twisted, expecting Garion, a foolish sailor, or a sharp-eyed guard. But the maneuver did not break the man’s grip, nor did a well-placed jab to his stomach. His flesh was stone beneath her hand, and not for armor or chain mail. Her assailant towered over her, seemingly twice her size, with the bearing of one who knew how to fight.
You are certainly not Garion.
Sorasa reacted as she had been trained to, one hand going to the clasp at her neck, the other into a pouch at her belt. With a flick of her hand, a puff of stinging blue smoke exploded at her feet, and the cloak fell from her shoulders.
She kept her eyes shut and held her breath as she bolted down the street. The man coughed violently behind her, her cloak hanging loose in his hand.