Others

      The open sky continued to overwhelm them, until they found a hiding place. Ironically, it was the basement of a house not far from the outer gate of Sina’s wall. It was a convenient location for them to get out of the city quickly, since the police would search the outlying houses first, and then the ones in plain sight. The hike had worn them out, so with a happy groan Kiva, Josh, and Jim fell to the floor. Will and Matt were exhausted too, but the fresh air and light seemed to energize them, so they didn’t feel tired yet, but all of that suited Al just fine. He called the two guys over to him and said: “You can go to the square and walk there, but try not to make yourself conspicuous. Better yet, explore the streets around us, we don’t want to have to look all over town for you.” And the jolly boys didn’t mind that at all. They climbed through the window and left.       Al turned to the others, thinking for a moment. They looked at him expectantly, waiting for some more serious orders for themselves. “You get some rest, maybe you can even nap, and I hope the little ones don’t get into any trouble in the meantime. I’ll go to our employer’s meeting place, see if there’s anything new, and find out where he’ll be today.” “If anything happens to you, where should we look for your marks?” Jim asked. “Near the sixth bridge from the main gate. You’ve been to Orvud before, I don’t need to give you more precise directions,” he smiled at them and rubbed his cheek tiredly. “I don’t think we’ll be needed too much before tonight.” “You’re right. Orvud is a calm and quiet place, assassins, if they come out, do it at night,” Kiva made a jokingly serious expression.       Everyone laughed. Al exited the cellar the way Matt and Will had left it.       “It is unbearable to sit in a cellar, when you can walk under a clear sky and feel the flow of air, so lively and fresh”. But all this pleasantness receded into the background as the impending business drew nearer. The absurdity and strangeness of their purpose came again to mind. Something was restless. After talking with Denberg, Al returned to them an hour later, bringing Mett and Will with him. He found them hanging around the market by the river. Sitting down by the wall, Al closed his eyes and rubbed them: “We’ll be out by late afternoon, and it’ll be about as I planned. You’ve had time to think about all this. And the only thing that confuses me is that we haven’t been able to get a word out about, why these life-threatening threats should be considered serious. But that’s his business” “It’s his business, but we’ll be involved,” Jim said reasonably.       Kiva didn’t like it either. Not the suspense, but the case itself. It left her with a certain residue. They spent the next few hours gathering their strength and preparing.       It was actually possible to get some sleep. By the time the four persons came out, they were dressed in a very similar manner. They took off their cloaks, removed anything extra from their pockets that might jingle and attract unnecessary attention, fastened loose clothing to avoid unnecessary rustling, each checked their weapons. They became serious and focused, no mistakes allowed. And lastly, they strictly instructed the younger members not to go outside the basement. But there was no great need for that. Both Mett and Will were exhausted, and now that the experience was no longer invigorating and energizing, all the fatigue from the march and a full day on their feet made itself felt. The others came out of their hiding shelter and followed Al. He led them to the place where Denberg was now, and from which they were to begin their work. They approached the house and took their places according to their plan.       Two stealthy shadows rose to the rooftops, Al standing in one of the alleys in front, leaning against the wall, Kiva positioned herself in the distance, watching the alleys behind them. Her instincts were sharpening. And if in normal life she could afford to be calm, in some extremely rare moments caring and cheerful, then now… This uplift, this lightness, it was as if the long-dead receptors of the soul were coming alive inside. To be real, not a person, whom life had driven into a certain mold, but herself and useful. She didn’t know, if the others felt anything like that, but it didn’t matter. As if getting used to this new skin or, on the contrary, shedding the mask, all senses sharpened. Attention, hearing, even touch, as it might seem, became stronger. A little time passed, and a short, overweight man, accompanied by three men, “Probably his guards”, the girl noted, left the building and walked down the street. They followed him in parallel.       Al and Kiv moved stealthily down the street, while the brothers moved silently in the shadows of the chimneys. Their movements were not conspicuous, not even in the periphery of their vision. They examined not only the roofs themselves, but also the alleys beneath them. Josh walked on one side of the street with Kiva, and Jim made up Al’s pair. It was a practiced tactic for them; it minimized the blind spots of their view. The role of those standing on the rooftops was very important. If something went wrong, they could attract attention or they could strike unexpectedly from above. The role of the lower ones was more like bait. Denberg spent about forty minutes inside yet another house. Kiva cast a questioning glance at Josh, who shook his head negatively.       From their side it was quiet, and there was no one suspicious; she couldn’t see the silent gesture between the two brothers from below, but she was sure it was the same on the other side. From here she could only make out the vague outline of Jim, but only because she knew roughly, where he might be. One of the guards came out of the building and walked along the street. “'Barely anyone will show up until the sun goes down, it’s too crowded before sunset'”, it didn’t seem like the Underground City, where there was almost always some kind of traffic, where there was no clear concept of day and night. Indeed, until a few hours ago there had been many people in the streets here; now there were fewer and fewer. A carriage pulled up, driven by the same guard, who had come out earlier.       And so twilight descended upon Orvud, the same sticky and dim twilight in which bad, incomprehensible, scary things usually happen. But no one could have known, that tonight would only observe the incomprehensible events, leaving the bad and scary to another evening.       Denberg went out and got into the carriage with the guards, and the horses moved off. Strangely enough, the carriage drove slowly. Apparently, they were going home. The four followed the carriage, the pace allowing them to keep up with it without much strain. They headed away from the river, that divided the city in half, deep into the streets lined with various buildings. Here, more by gut feeling than by sight, Kiv noticed movement. Crouching down and looking around, she saw a man. No doubt a man of tall stature. He was walking down a nearby alley, and he didn’t lurk much. He was wearing a knee-length coat, his hands in his pockets. A cigarette light was visible in his mouth. The man disappeared behind the house. “It doesn’t look like a group of people here, when you act in a group you can’t afford to walk around so carelessly. And it doesn’t look like he noticed me”.       She crept around the bend, the unknown man leisurely walking away, following parallel to the carriage’s course. Kiva looked up, searching for Josh. “We need to signal the others”. Josh had already pulled out his knife and was showing her signs, that he would make an overhead attack first and she would have to finish him off. “He must have spotted him before I did and already signaled the others, more than a good plan”, she nodded to Josh and he headed for the edge of the roof. She didn’t need to look out from around the corner to know roughly, where the target was. Taking her blade in her right hand and checking the slingshot, she had coiled in her left, she kept a steady eye on Josh. “It’s hard to be the first to cut the silence and the first to strike”. A couple moments. And there it was.       Josh jumps down, clutching the knife in his right hand and holding his right wrist with his left, and Kiva leaps out from around the corner, planning to strike from behind. But what she saw there, made her adjust her initial movements. Without a doubt, the man in the hat, as if sensing movement in the air, began to veer to the side, while simultaneously putting his elbow out to meet Josh. The blow struck the young guy’s jaw, and it didn’t take a genius to realize, that it was more than enough to incapacitate a person for about ten minutes. Josh fell to all fours from the blow, though he didn’t release his weapon, but that didn’t matter much. He was unconscious, and that was enough for the man, who spat out his cigarette to grab a knife from his pocket with his other hand and bring it over the neck of the young lad, who had dared to attack him.       He would have stuck the blade in his neck, but when he saw the girl, who had sprung toward them, aiming the knife at his throat, he had time to change the original direction of his blade. Now she was threatened, and acting more on the impulse of her spinal cord than on reason, she leaned to the right and threw her left arm forward, blocking the enemy’s attack with her shoulder. The pain flared in her hand, but not yet rooted to permanent perception and awareness, Kiva sent her left hand in the opposite direction, and it partially worked. The man clutched the knife tightly and at first didn’t realize that his hand was following the weapon, revealing his chest and face, where Kiva immediately aimed the blow of his right hand with the clutched blade.       But his opponent was not only more experienced, but acted as naturally as if it were no more difficult for him than breathing. He ducked, the blade just scraping the edge of his coat near the collar. He yanked his knife from her shoulder and bounced away. Straightened up, a look of curiosity in his gaze. “Not bad, bitch,” he hissed.       He lunged at her with unexpected speed for his size, she had enough reflexes to jump up and jump back against the wall. “I need to get the fight away from Josh, so he’s out of the way, until he comes to his senses, we need to stall, until the others arrive”. Setting a more or less clear goal in front of her, Kiva decided with her movements. She dodged a few of his lunges, but she kept her eyes open, it was important to watch for the slightest movement of her enemy’s body, or else it would be the end.       It seemed to her, that ten minutes had passed in such tension, though it was barely two. But she couldn’t get away from all the attacks, and he caught her with his knee, slamming it into her right side. Her breath caught, and she flew back against the wall, hitting wounded shoulder in addition, a wheeze escaping instead of a scream. The knife fell out of her hand.The man approached her, twirling his blade in his hand. He was grinning, the grin of a beast that had only to play with its prey before finishing it off. “I’d have more fun with you, little girl, but I’m a busy man, so I’ll finish you quickly,” he didn’t finish.        Al, who had already gotten to the spot, almost drove his blade into the man’s temple, but eventually only slid the knife across his cheek. The man jumped back harshly, but Jim was already there waiting for him. He made a slash, and the enemy began to fall. Perhaps it was just bad luck for the four of them on this night.       As he fell, the enemy managed to half-turn and plunged the knife deeply into Jim’s leg above the knee. A clenched scream sounded more like a snarl. The unknown man jerked his hands sharply off the ground and slammed his knee into Jim’s face, then rolled to the side, knowing Al would come at him from behind. The yong guy was curbed by rage. When he turned into the alley, and it was only two minutes after Josh had signaled him to do so, and he saw the friend lying on the ground, his arms sluggishly moving, he saw the man approaching Kiva, who was laying against the wall. He was beginning to feel angry. Now that Jim’s leg was bleeding, and his face was broken, his rage took over his mind quite easily.       Kiva noticed, that Al was out of control, lashing out blindly at the enemy. Having been in a fight with that man, she knew that such behavior could be fatal, so she jumped to her feet, picked up her knife, and rushed into the fight, which was beginning to seem very unequal, even predetermined. The two of them couldn’t manage to squeeze the enemy, and they only had to dodge, concentrating on defense. The tall man gave them no pause or opportunity to strike. “If we could somehow manage to knock that fucking knife out of his hand, then we might be able to do something else”, was spinning in her mind. At some moment, they succeeded. When the blade was once again aimed at Al, he jumped sideways at Kiva, and she managed to catch the enemy weapon by the blade with her sling and yank it toward her. The enemy immediately released it, not allowing himself to be dragged after it, and jumped back against the wall. Al lunged at him, but even then they couldn’t catch him off guard.       He leaned to the side, one hand gripping Al’s left arm, and before Al could use his right hand with the knife, he grabbed the back of his head with the other and slammed the guy’s head against the wall. And then again. He didn’t have time for the third time, Kiva interrupted him. There was no emotion on her face, just focus and attention. Though there were bits of fear for her friends lurking somewhere inside, they were ruthlessly crushed by instinct, which told her to end this shit faster. But the man easily lifted Al’s limp body and threw it towards her, she lowered her blade, not wanting to hurt her comrade, and tried to dodge, she almost succeeded. Almost, because that was exactly, what the man had been waiting for.       Jumping up to her, taking advantage of the fact, that she was concentrating on dodging and not accidentally hurting her friend, he kicked at her right side, which had already taken a hit today. A hitched breath again, and a couple crucial seconds of confusion from the pain. He grabbed her left shoulder, the grip was steely. The naturalness of those movements was frightening. “He knows where to hit, just like he knows how to walk. It can be read in his every move”, she thought, as he pinned her against the wall, twisting her left arm and squeezing her throat. Only now realizing, that no life-saving movement was coming into her mind, for lack of oxygen, for the fountain of pain in her side and shoulder, she realised, that this was the end. She allowed herself to look up into the face of the man, who continued to squeeze her throat mercilessly.       He was smiling. That scary smile. His hair reached down to his neck and was dark, perhaps. His cheekbones were high, his nose straight, his lips and eyebrows thin and graceful, his face even aristocratic. The gray eyes, in which mirth sparkled, looked just as studiously at her. And now, as he squeezed her neck, pressing out the last of her oxygen, the heat rising in her head, and the lights in her eyes beginning to jump, she looked up into that face, fully appreciating the ease of movement, and felt a hunch stirring at the bottom of her brain but not finding its way out. There was no fear, there was even a certain respect. He’d won against the majority, attacking stealthily, all by the rules. Suddenly the man laughed, tilting his head back and letting her go. “Don’t make that face, I’m not your executioner today, trash. I have other things to do, though you have amused me.” She slid down the wall and coughed, but kept her eyes on him, still catching every movement, every change in his face.       And he picked up his knife from the ground, looked for something and picked it up, and it was a wide-brimmed hat. It had fallen off in the fury of the fight. He leaned toward her and said quietly, looking straight into her eyes, his gaze frighteningly serious. “I don’t doubt I’ll see you again, little girl.”       Kiva didn’t move, something told her, that the man wasn’t joking as much as he might, that he really wasn’t going to kill them now, and that it was better not to influence his decision in any way. The man put on his hat, put his hands in his coat pockets, and walked further down the alley, deeper into the night. It was only at that moment that the whirling thought found its way out, that realization came, that everything came together by name: “Kenny Ripper,” came out in a gruff voice. Ripper didn’t turn around, but he obviously heard her, for he lifted his hat as if to say hello, before turning the corner and disappearing into the dusk of Orvud.