Honour Under Moonlight: A Tale of the God Fragments by Tom Lloyd

Author:Tom Lloyd [Lloyd, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9781473213234
Google: jzD6DAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B01ERWBOFG
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2016-10-19T23:00:00+00:00

6

The slight scuff of cloth on stone jerked Toil back to alertness. She blinked and realised she had been staring blankly out over the wharves, seeing nothing as the nag of her injury and a dull ache in her head sapped her wits. She’d spotted one other watcher of the gaming house and had been trying to find a third when she’d slowly drifted.

They come in threes if they’re following a suit of cards, she reminded herself, biting her lip to wake herself up. There’s one more you’ve not yet found.

She turned slowly. The sound came again, from the east wall. The midnight bell had been rung a while back; there should be no priests out or around the temple at this time of night.

Maybe the third has come to me.

She assessed the shadows of the bell platform. Aside from the three bell ropes evenly spaced across it, nothing looked out of place. The corpse was tucked into the darkest corner, effectively invisible to anyone standing in the moonlight.

Toil had removed the dead man’s cloak a little earlier, replacing her priest’s robe with a mind to walk out on the wharves and lure the third assassin out. But now she could clearly hear someone climbing the wall – quietly and expertly, but it was a calm night and only the gaming house saw celebrations anywhere near here. A dark, still hush. Toil’s instincts had been bred for just such conditions. She slid a blade free even as she kept her vigil at the window-slit.

Eventually the figure crawled over the top of the wall and crept, cat-like, to the entrance. ‘Where are you?’ a woman whispered uncertainly.

‘Here,’ Toil breathed as softly as she could. Too late did she remember the corpse was a man. She hurled her knife, but the other woman was already moving. Toil caught a flash of her mask, half white, half black, as the assassin darted to one side, lunging with her own knife.

The corpse saved Toil as the woman trod on an outstretched leg and rolled her ankle. She slewed sideways into the wall, her blade clattering to the ground as she yelped and grabbed for support. Toil didn’t wait, just hurled herself forward and smashed a fist into the newcomer’s face. The blow rocked her back, but even as the woman fell she seemed to bounce straight up again. She was so quick and nimble that her kick to Toil’s bad leg was a complete surprise.

Toil buckled, biting back a scream, and only just managed to catch the other’s second knife in her cloak to tangle it. She turned into the blow to get behind the blade before it could slice free, trusting she would be the stronger of the two. Stars burst before her eyes as she head-butted the woman then out of habit followed it up with a knee to the crotch. The power behind the blows staggered the assassin and Toil continued forward, slamming her against the back wall then down to the ground.

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