AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nicolo grabbed a sword off the floor where a dead man had dropped it, and tossed it to me. I caught the sword just in time to parry an incoming thrust. The adrenalin surged through me and I found myself smiling: I’d missed fighting as much as climbing—if I never had to wash or dry another dish, it would be too soon.
Side by side, Nicolo and I drove forward, our three attackers clumsily blocking our swords. Nicolo killed the first and second with a slash across the throat and a jab to the heart. I brought down the third. It was the first time I’d ever killed a man, and in the heat of the fight and the knowledge that he was trying to kill me, I felt little.
It was nice to know I had it in me.
Master Nicolo looked across at me. There was surely no way he could recognize me as the girl he’d watched bathe in the garden; none of the bits he’d been interested in were now showing.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s nothing,” I disguised my voice, thinking back to when Master Vox had told me doing so would save my life one day.
“Thank you for your help.”
I bowed and turned to leave.
“Wait.”
I felt the point of a sword between my shoulder blades.
“It seems discourteous given that you may have just saved my life, but I must insist on knowing who you are and what you were doing in the attic.”
I turned slowly and cursed my bad luck. Nicolo kept the tip of his sword on me. He raised it to my throat, and for the first time, I saw the hardness in his eyes that had won him his reputation, and the title of ‘the terrible’.
Suddenly my gaze flicked to the area behind him, and my eyes widened a fraction as I gave an almost imperceptible nod.
If I’d been less subtle about it, Nicolo probably wouldn’t have bought it, but because I kept the nod small, and because he was used to people creeping up behind him, he turned. Of course, he found no one, and when he turned back, it was to meet my fist coming the other way, complete with a set of brass knuckles.
I have a solid right hook, and Nicolo was out before he hit the floor, blood already cascading down one of his eyes where the metal nicked his skin a little too deep. I’d been careful about where I landed the blow though, to avoid breaking his nose.
One of the bodyguards had returned, and was standing in the doorway. I sprang up to grab the lip of the attic trapdoor, pulled myself up and was away across the rooftops before the man could wonder what had happened.
That was one good opportunity to kill Master Nicolo wasted. And yet, looking back on it, I’d had no impulse to kill him.
