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"Mistake? What are you talking about?" He drew her up against his muscled body. "What mistake?"
"You've made a tactical error, Emperor," Kahlan said, managing to stress his title in a way that made it sound like a mocking insult. She wanted him angry, and she could see that it was working.
Despite hanging from his white-knuckled fists, Kahlan tried to sound composed, even aloof. "You see, you have made it clear to me that no matter what I do I have nothing to lose. You've made it clear that you can't be reasoned with. You said that you are going to do your worst to me. That empowers me because I am no longer bound by any hope for mercy from you. In revealing that I have no hope whatsoever for any mercy, you have given me an advantage I didn't previously have.
"You see, by making that mistake, you showed me that I had nothing to lose by killing your guards and, since I'm to be subjected to your worst anyway, I might as well have my revenge on Sister Cecilia. By making such a tactical mistake, you have shown me that you are not so smart after all, that you are just a brute and can be bested."
He relaxed his grip just enough for Kahlan to touch the toes of her boots to the ground so that she could gain some leverage.
"You really are something," he said as a slow, cunning smile overcame his rage. "I'm going to enjoy what I have planned for you."
"I've already told you your mistake, and you repeat it? Apparently, you don't learn very well, either, do you?"
Before, when he'd pulled her up against him in a rage and had brought her face close to his, when his hands had been firmly occupied holding her in a threatening manner, Kahlan had used the distraction to gingerly slip his knife from the sheath on his belt. With two fingers she'd worked it up into her hand. He had been so angry he hadn't noticed.
Rather than get worked up into another fit of rage at her latest insult, he began to laugh.
Kahlan already had his knife gripped tightly in her fist.
Without ceremony or warning, she thrust it at him as hard as she could.
Her intention had been to drive the blade up under his ribs, to cut open vital organs, maybe even his heart if she could get it in that far. The way he was holding her, though, hampered her movement just enough so that she missed her mark by a fraction of an inch and instead struck his lowest rib. The point stuck in bone.
Before she had time to yank it back and stab him again, he seized her wrist and wrenched her arm over, spinning her around. Her back slammed against his chest. He had the knife out of her grip before she had a chance to do anything about it. His arm across her throat cut off her air as he held her against his massive muscles. His chest heaved in anger against her back.
Rather than admitting defeat, and before she blacked out from lack of air, she used all her muscle to drive the heel of her boot into his shin. By his cry she knew it hurt. She struck sharply with her elbow directly into the fresh wound. He flinched. As her elbow rebounded from the blow she cocked it forward to gain momentum and then smashed back into his jaw. He was so big, though, so strong, that it didn't have a disabling effect. It had been rather like punching a bull. And, like a bull, he was only enraged further.
Looking no worse for her attack, Jagang seized a fistful of her shirt before she could slip out of his reach. He punched her in the middle hard enough to double her over and drive her breath from her lungs. She gasped, trying to draw a breath against the stunning pain.
Kahlan realized that she was on her knees only when he lifted her by her hair and placed her back on her feet. Her knees wobbled unsteadily.
Jagang was grinning. His flash of anger had been washed away by an unexpected, dangerous, but one-sided brawl, and an opportunity to inflict pain. He was beginning to enjoy the game.
"Why don't you just kill me?" Kahlan managed to get out as he stood watching her.
"Kill you? Why would I want to kill you? Then you would just be dead. I want you alive so that I can make you suffer."
The two Sisters made no move to rein in their master. Kahlan knew that they would not have objected to anything he did to her. As long as his attention was on Kahlan, it wasn't on them. Before he could strike her again, light abruptly flooded the tent, drawing his attention.
"Excellency," a deep voice said. It had come from the side. One of the big brutes held the carpet aside as he waited. The man looked similar to the two guards she had killed before. Kahlan supposed that Jagang had an endless supply of such men.
"What is it?"
"We're ready to strike your camp, Excellency. I am sorry for interrupting, but you asked to be told as soon as we were ready. You said that you wanted us to make haste."
Jagang released Kahlan's hair. "All right, get started then."
He swung around unexpectedly, backhanding her across the face hard enough to send her tumbling across the floor.
While she lay on the floor recovering her senses, he pressed a hand to the wound over his rib. He pulled the hand away to see how much he was bleeding. He wiped his hand on his trousers, apparently deciding that it was a relatively minor wound and nothing to be concerned about. From what Kahlan could see of him, he bore a number of scars, most testifying to injuries far worse than the one she had given him.
"See to it that she doesn't get any more ideas," he told the Sisters as he headed for the carpet that the guard was holding aside for him.
Kahlan felt fire race down from the collar, through her nerves all the way to her toes. The burning pain pulled an involuntary gasp.
She wanted to scream in rage at having that hot pain yet again ripping through her. She hated the way the Sisters used the collar to control her. She hated the helpless agony they could put her in.
Sister Ulicia stepped closer and stood over her. "That was a pretty stupid thing to do, now, wasn't it?"
Kahlan couldn't answer through the stunning pain. What she would have told the Sister was that it wasn't stupid at all, that it had been worth it.
As long as she had breath in her lungs, she would fight them. With her last breath, if need be, she would fight.
* * *
CHAPTER 43
At the opening out of Emperor Jagang's tent, Kahlan recoiled at seeing the army of the Imperial Order up close for the first time. Distance had taken off a bit of the rougher edges. Even though she had a pretty good sense of them, it was still an unnerving sight.
The dense mass of men spread unbroken to the horizon. With everyone in motion and moving about—bending, standing, turning, lifting gear, joining into ranks, saddling horses, loading wagons, with different groups on horseback moving like waves through the mass of men—it looked like an endless, churning, treacherous black sea.
There was not a single man in sight—and she could see thousands upon endless thousands—who looked kindly or harmless. Every single man looked grim and grisly, as if there was nothing he looked forward to in life as much as the prospect of doing violence. These men looked driven by the singular prospect of an unrestrained rampage. Kahlan feared to think of those who might find themselves in these mens' path.
