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Luckily, I had been trained from childhood to deal with assassins. My parents had never known when a sympathizer with the Incendiaries might come for me. So now, before he was able to slash across my face with his vicious claws, I spun out of the way, twirling my Qualtl’eth blade and slicing off his hand.
He dropped to his knees with a howl, and I turned to check on Gwen.
The Lonki’s partner had leapt onto Gwen’s back and was slamming her fist upward into my human female partner’s face.
That single glance at Gwen was almost enough to land me in trouble, as by the time I turned back to the Lonki, he was on his feet again, lunging toward me with his one remaining hand.
This time, I didn’t waste a moment. I spun and extended the curved front edge of my blade, hooking it around the Lonki’s neck and then tugging it back toward me sharply.
The blade’s edges had been dulled by the trek through first the valley and then the tropical jungle, but not so much that it didn’t do its job.
The Lonki’s head parted from his shoulders, landing on the clearing ground with a squelching thump before rolling across the leaves to fetch up at Gwen’s feet. She froze, and the woman riding her back let out an enraged shriek. She shoved Gwen to the ground, leapfrogging over her and racing toward me, as if she could pull me apart with her bare hands.
I lashed out with one foot, catching her in the stomach and kicking her to the ground.
“If you walk away now,” I told her, “I will let you live.” After all, I remembered Gwen’s insistence on allowing Sandy to survive. I would allow this woman to live, as well, if Gwen requested it.
“You bastard,” the woman gasped, scrambling to her feet, her arms wrapped around her abdomen. “He was going to take me with him when we won.”
“That’s not going to happen now,” Gwen said calmly from behind her, pushing up to her knees and then standing. “You should leave.”
The woman’s expression turned crafty, and she slid her hand into a pocket in her jumpsuit. “He wanted you to come with us,” she said to Gwen, taking a step toward her and holding out her other hand as if attempting to be friendly.
“Well,” Gwen said, glancing at the headless body. “That’s not going to happen, either.”
The other woman snarled and lunged toward Gwen, pulling a knife out of her pocket as she moved. But Gwen was ready—at some point, she had drawn her own knife. She simply held it out in front of her, and the other woman ran straight into it, too furious to even see what was happening.
In the meantime, I had raced up behind her, determined to save Gwen—not by magic, this time, but through my planet’s time-honored tradition of executing assassins.
So at the same moment Gwen’s blade sank into the woman’s stomach, mine took off her head.
Blood fountained out of the woman’s neck, soaking us both, and the body crumpled between us.
Gwen brushed a film of blood out of her eyes and stared down at the woman’s corpse for a long time. “I’ve never killed anyone before,” she said, her voice solemn. “It seems like maybe I should feel guilty or something.”
I moved around the body and wrapped my arms around Gwen, heedless of the sticky blood that coated us. “It was self-defense. She didn’t leave you any choice.”
She gave me a quick squeeze and nodded. “I know. I don’t feel guilty. I just feel like maybe I ought to.” Blinking, she pulled away from me. “But I do want to get away from here.”
“Do you want to see if they have any useful supplies we could scavenge?”
Gwen gave the bodies a distasteful look. “No. I just want to leave.”
“I think I hear running water nearby,” I said. “Let’s find it.”
Gwen grabbed the handle of the rolling case she had been pulling behind her all day. “The sooner the better.”
We moved back into the jungle, and I was glad we put some distance between us and the two corpses in the clearing before the sound of running water grew loud enough that even Gwen could hear it.
Finally, we pushed through to another clearing—this one leading up to a small sandy beach surrounding a clear pool at the bottom of a short cliff with a small waterfall tumbling over the rocks above.
“It’s beautiful,” Gwen said in tones of awe. She turned and gazed up at me. “I know it’s early, but could we stop here for the night? I really want more than anything to wash off all this blood.”
I would have done anything for her. Stopping to spend the night in this idyllic setting was easy. “Of course.”
