CHAPTER 29: UNSEEN THREATS

  Lucas unsheathed his rapier. He was armed with only the one now that he was outside the arena, supposedly back in the company of civil society. One sword against five men. Elias counted them twice to be sure. Knowing the precise number of your enemies was an important survival skill in terms of not getting knifed in the back.

  Though it wasn’t Elias they were after, not this time. He surveyed the scene for a city guard or some other source of assistance, but it was clear that Lucas was on his own. He appeared up to the task, ready for it, even.

  “Most beg for their lives,” their apparent leader said, “or offer us money. You look like you could afford it.”

  “I have better things to spend my relics on,” Lucas replied. “I prefer to invest in myself.”

  Elias wondered if that was a joke meant for him as he gripped the handle of his pistol, leaving the gun holstered for now. He wasn’t sure he wanted to volunteer himself for this fight, but he would be ready if someone else made the choice for him. His pistol was loaded but, for obvious safety reasons, not entirely. He would need to fill the flash pan and cock the hammer before he could shoot the thing. That would take him a few seconds. Would he have a few seconds? He stepped back, though not as far back as Abigail.

  She had removed herself from their sights, though she had not fled for somewhere safer. She certainly could have, and Elias might have suggested it if not for the fact that he didn’t want to draw their attention to her. Someone was already eyeing his pistol.

  “Throw your gun on the ground, kid,” the man said, “unless you want to end up like your pompous friend.”

  It was a presumptuous statement considering the pompous man in question was still standing, still looking pompous, flourishing his rapier: his invitation to come and get him. Perhaps these assassins were more worried about this fight than they let on, Elias hypothesized. They were buying time with words—not their strong suit—when they had been sent with blades. Were they here for personal revenge, or were they simply more afraid of whoever had sent them?

  Whatever the case, Elias held onto his pistol. He unholstered the weapon, filled the flash pan, cocked the hammer, and told them to “Leave us alone.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Lucas grinning a half-grin. His approval was adrenaline in Elias’s veins, his satisfaction contagious, for they shared a common secret. These poor bastards underestimated Elias too, he told himself. He had killed pirates. He was still wearing the blood stains.

  And only one of them had brought a pistol. They had come here to make their kill quietly. The slender man in question, standing to Elias’s right, unholstered his gun, a rusty flintlock that had already been prepped to shoot.

  Elias pointed his pistol toward his fellow marksman. “Don’t try it. Keep your arm down. I won’t miss.”

  Alas, they did indeed underestimate him. Not only his ability with the weapon but his willingness to fire it. The slender shooter lifted his arm toward Elias, no doubt expecting him to flinch.

  Elias did not flinch. He pressed the trigger, the path of his bullet revealed to him, as everyone turned to see it fulfill its predetermined destiny. The bullet struck the shooter square in his chest, sending him reeling. He stumbled backward, fired his pistol at the sandstone road, and collapsed into a starfish.

  Four to go. Elias updated his internal tally, though he felt no safer for it, as now he too was a target. To prove the point, one of them charged him before he could reload his pistol. This was a different sort of fight than the battle he had won over those pirates, and he was even less prepared for it.

  Luckily, he had Lucas on his side. The quick collector lunged forward between them, ending the attacker’s approach before the man realized what had killed him. Rapiers were not built for cutting and carving, and yet Lucas sent the blade of his halfway through the man’s neck with a single swipe and a spray of blood. His victim toppled to the ground in a pool of himself as Lucas spun back around and beckoned them to try, try again.

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  Three to go. Elias briefly checked on Abigail, who was still standing in the distance, both hands cupped over her mouth.

  As two men turned their attention to Lucas, the obviously greater threat to their party, the talker of the group set his sights on Elias. There was no way Elias could fully reload his pistol before his attacker would be upon him, eviscerating him for the effort. He tossed his gun upward like a juggler and caught its barrel on the way down, ready to use its hard wooden handle as a cudgel.

  He didn’t imagine he appeared particularly intimidating with his makeshift club, and yet his opponent moved with caution. They had been proven wrong about him once already and paid the price for it. They would not give Elias another stupid mistake the young man might seize. Beside them, he caught flashes of Lucas’s rapier flitting through the night air like a mad bat, striking its enemies one unseen cut at a time.

  Elias dodged his opponent’s first swing by jumping backward and parried the second with the butt of his gun, trying not to think about the damage to his weapon. He parried another swing, but it was a distraction. A kick to the gut sent him tripping and falling painfully onto his tailbone.

  The scar-faced assassin loomed over him, smiling.

  Fortunately for our protagonist, it was a short-lived victory. Lucas, having made quick work of the others, appeared from seemingly nowhere and stuck his blade through one ear of the last man standing—and out the other.

  For the final few seconds of his unfortunate life, the failed assassin cried blood. It streamed from his eyes and nose and mouth and ears, until his entire body went limp, held vertical like a marionette on a skewer by the strength alone in Lucas’s arm. He ripped out his blade, blood painting a ragged scar across the sandstone, and watched his puppet fall.

  With one hand, Lucas whipped the red off his rapier and, with the other, reached down toward Elias, who was still on his ass and elbows, clinging to the barrel of his pistol. Elias accepted the helping hand and thanked his savior.

  “It is I who owes you, Elias,” Lucas said. “This wasn’t your fight.”

  “I think you could have handled it,” Elias replied.

  “Quite likely, but you removed that man’s pistol from the equation. It made things easier. Speaking of which, you should carry a blade the next time you decide to help a stranger. You’ve clearly got a way with that gun, but a gun is only as good as the bullet packed inside it.”

  “I’ve never practiced with a sword.” Elias looked at the one Lucas sheathed back into its scabbard. “I didn’t think I would need to, but already this isn’t the first time I’ve been proven wrong about that.”

  “And probably not the last.” Lucas smiled his charming smile. “Come. We shouldn’t be seen.”

  The evidence of that statement was plain enough for anyone to see: five grisly bodies scattered across a now abandoned street. At least their dropped weapons told the true story. These were no victims. Elias scanned the block for witnesses, but they had already fled for their lives, save a stricken-looking Abigail. Even the game host had abandoned his solitary table, though he had taken his shells and his pea.

  Elias and Lucas caught up with Abigail, who interrupted the former before he could say something intended to be brave or clever. Once again, he had misread his own hand.

  “That was stupid.” Her criticism was clearly directed toward Elias and Elias alone.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You should have run.”

  “You should have run, Elias. You should have run.”

  “I don’t run from things” was all he said back as Lucas stayed quietly amused.

  From the scene of the crime, they ventured down another deserted block, then turned left onto a busy one. Elias hoped they had created enough distance, that they could blend in from here, get lost in the crowd. Abigail looked lost in her head, but at least she remained visibly unmarked by the event. Elias had even more blood on his breeches. Perhaps, he conceded, he would at this point simply buy new breeches.

  While surprisingly unbloodied all considering, Lucas seemed oblivious to the splatter of crimson accenting his cheek. Elias was strangely reminded of his mother, of how she flicked stars upon a canvas with some white paint and the bristles of her brush. A bit of night sky on Lucas’s face.

  He wiped it into an inconspicuous blush after Elias pointed it out and said, “I should be going. You have my thanks again and me in your debt.” Lucas turned around before the less experienced collector could reciprocate his gratitude, strolling into the distance as if nothing of note had happened.

  Alone once more, Abigail handed Elias her empty goblet. “I think I’ll just head back to my room.”

  “I had a nice time,” Elias told her, sounding a little disappointed, “until all the stuff happened.”

  “Stuff certainly happened,” she said. “Maybe keep your head down next time.”

  He recoiled at her suggestion. “If I keep my head down, I drown.”

  Elias could tell she did not understand what he meant by that, nor did he quite know how to explain it. Just as there were parts of Abigail’s past that someone like Elias couldn’t comprehend, this aspect of him was no less foreign to her. It came from a place that she did not.

  And so, as they parted ways in sober silence, he was left wondering if this would be the last time he ever spoke with Abigail Graystone.