Sukegei watched her, all frost and hauteur and feathers, and let his grin creep wider. "Ah, but you do think of me," he said, voice low and pleased with itself. "A nettlesome fly living in that very cold, very tall head. I am practically part of the décor already." He rocked back on his heels. Hands spreading in a lazy, theatrical shrug. "Now. Talking to whores." He clicked his tongue. "That, I know. That is a sacred art. They tell me everything. Who beats them. Who tips. Who disappears. Who cries after and who prays during. Some of my finest confessions came from beds with bad sheets."
He leaned closer, dropping his voice as if sharing temple secrets. "You, my towering avalanche, should stay back and be impressed by my mastery. You lack the tact for this place. No offense. You walk into a brothel and half the women will start confessing sins they have not committed yet. The other half will assume the city has skipped straight to Judgment Day." He swept a hand up her length. From heels to feathers.
"If we need someone to stand in the corner and brood like a bad omen, you are a natural. But coaxing information out of people who charge by the hour?" He tapped his chest. "That is my liturgy as you say." He shot her a quick, roguish grin. "Give me a few minutes. I will have them laughing, crying, and pointing us straight at our soul-thief. Try not to freeze the chairs while I work." He turned and vanished through the curtains into the waiting haze of smoke and perfume.
The sounds inside shifted quickly. First came laughter. Loud. Coarse. The kind that says someone is telling a very bad story very well. Then a rising chorus of protests. A woman’s shrill accusation. A man’s outraged bark. The scrape of a chair. The heavy thump of a body hitting a table. Glass shattered. Something wooden splintered. Someone yelled about credit. Someone else yelled about blood.
Then the door exploded open. Sukegei burst out of the brothel at speed. Cloak snapping. Boots slipping on the cobbles as he fought for balance. One arm shielded his head. The other hugged his scabbard so he did not trip over his own steel. A tankard flew past his ear and shattered against the wall. A heel bounced off the stones by his foot. A battered pillow slapped the back of his head and coughed out a cloud of stale dust.
Behind him poured chaos. Patrons. Working girls. The doorman. The madam. All teeth and curses and flying objects. "IT WAS JUST A LITTLE CREDIT!" someone howled from inside. Sukegei ducked under a thrown hookah and bolted straight for Ixqueya. His face was alight with that strange mix of glee and sheer survival instinct that only ever appears when a man knows he has made a very stupid choice and refuses to be sorry.
"An IOU is just as good as coin!" he screamed, laughter and panic tangled together. "In some cultures!"
Something small and lethal flashed in the lantern light. A sandal. It spun end over end toward his head with the speed of long practice. He jerked sideways on instinct. The missile sliced past his cheek so close he felt the leather kiss his skin. "Ah, memories," he wheezed. "Thank you, priestess of flying footwear." Another object followed. He did not bother to identify it.
He reached Ixqueya in three long strides. Then he did what any sensible man with no sense of self-preservation would do. He jumped. Hands caught at her shoulders. Boots pushed off the ground. In one graceless, practiced movement he scrambled up and landed across her back. One arm hooked loosely around her collar to steady himself. The other flung out for balance as another sandal sailed past his head.
"Move!" he barked, half-laughing, half-shouting in her ear. "March, glacier! Use the long legs the gods cursed you with!" He twisted at the waist to look back, still clinging to her like an especially undignified cloak. A clay cup exploded where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier. "In my defense," he added, dodging yet another sandal with the ease of a man trained under Zubaida’s merciless aim, "this went better in my head!
He leaned closer, dropping his voice as if sharing temple secrets. "You, my towering avalanche, should stay back and be impressed by my mastery. You lack the tact for this place. No offense. You walk into a brothel and half the women will start confessing sins they have not committed yet. The other half will assume the city has skipped straight to Judgment Day." He swept a hand up her length. From heels to feathers.
"If we need someone to stand in the corner and brood like a bad omen, you are a natural. But coaxing information out of people who charge by the hour?" He tapped his chest. "That is my liturgy as you say." He shot her a quick, roguish grin. "Give me a few minutes. I will have them laughing, crying, and pointing us straight at our soul-thief. Try not to freeze the chairs while I work." He turned and vanished through the curtains into the waiting haze of smoke and perfume.
The sounds inside shifted quickly. First came laughter. Loud. Coarse. The kind that says someone is telling a very bad story very well. Then a rising chorus of protests. A woman’s shrill accusation. A man’s outraged bark. The scrape of a chair. The heavy thump of a body hitting a table. Glass shattered. Something wooden splintered. Someone yelled about credit. Someone else yelled about blood.
Then the door exploded open. Sukegei burst out of the brothel at speed. Cloak snapping. Boots slipping on the cobbles as he fought for balance. One arm shielded his head. The other hugged his scabbard so he did not trip over his own steel. A tankard flew past his ear and shattered against the wall. A heel bounced off the stones by his foot. A battered pillow slapped the back of his head and coughed out a cloud of stale dust.
Behind him poured chaos. Patrons. Working girls. The doorman. The madam. All teeth and curses and flying objects. "IT WAS JUST A LITTLE CREDIT!" someone howled from inside. Sukegei ducked under a thrown hookah and bolted straight for Ixqueya. His face was alight with that strange mix of glee and sheer survival instinct that only ever appears when a man knows he has made a very stupid choice and refuses to be sorry.
"An IOU is just as good as coin!" he screamed, laughter and panic tangled together. "In some cultures!"
Something small and lethal flashed in the lantern light. A sandal. It spun end over end toward his head with the speed of long practice. He jerked sideways on instinct. The missile sliced past his cheek so close he felt the leather kiss his skin. "Ah, memories," he wheezed. "Thank you, priestess of flying footwear." Another object followed. He did not bother to identify it.
He reached Ixqueya in three long strides. Then he did what any sensible man with no sense of self-preservation would do. He jumped. Hands caught at her shoulders. Boots pushed off the ground. In one graceless, practiced movement he scrambled up and landed across her back. One arm hooked loosely around her collar to steady himself. The other flung out for balance as another sandal sailed past his head.
"Move!" he barked, half-laughing, half-shouting in her ear. "March, glacier! Use the long legs the gods cursed you with!" He twisted at the waist to look back, still clinging to her like an especially undignified cloak. A clay cup exploded where he had been standing a heartbeat earlier. "In my defense," he added, dodging yet another sandal with the ease of a man trained under Zubaida’s merciless aim, "this went better in my head!
At first, the din within the pleasure house did not warrant her regard.
Raised voices belonged to such dens. Liquor made men bray. Flesh for hire made them howl. Furniture broke. Songs curtailed themselves into screams. This was the ordinary cacophony of vice. The city exhaled it with every dusk.
Then the sound shifted.
The laughter fractured. Glass did not merely break. It detonated. Once. Then again. A table collapsed. A heavy body struck timber. A woman shrieked not with feigned delight but with real outrage. Anger climbed the register. Debts were invoked. Knives were promised. The tone thickened into something uglier. Less revelry. More riot crammed inside painted walls.
Ixqueya’s brow drew the slightest furrow. Confusion flickered and died. Of course it was him.
The door flew open.
Sukegei erupted into the alley like a thrown weapon that had chosen its own trajectory. Cloak snapping. Boots skidding. His face carried that familiar, infuriating blend of delight and survival. Behind him surged a tide of enraged bodies. Tankards arced through lamplight. A hookah spun end over end. A sandal whirled with lethal accuracy. Shouts hurled accusations at his back. Thief. Liar. Bastard. Unpaying saint of bad credit.
She watched him hurtle toward her. For a moment there was only stillness inside her. The tableau wrote itself. The reprobate who had promised mastery. The stampede on his heels. The sandal scything through the air with priestly precision.
He came on without slowing. The leather missile carved for his skull. He twisted aside with the ease of a man trained by many afternoons of Zubaida’s airborne discipline. The sandal knifed past his cheek. He laughed. Of course he did. Then he leapt.
He did not ask. He assumed.
Hands clamped onto her shoulders. Weight slammed into her back. Boots scrambled against the solid curve of her hips. In an inelegant flurry he clambered up her like a drunken pilgrim scaling a forbidden altar. An arm hooked around her collar. His breath struck her ear. Hot. Breathless. Amused even now.
She could have rolled one shoulder and broken his grip. She could have stepped aside and allowed the mob to harvest him. For one crystalline instant she considered both outcomes. Then she chose a third.
If fate insisted on tying a mosquito to a glacier. The glacier would move.
Ixqueya inhaled. The breath sank through her body to her heels. She reached downward with will and memory. Beneath the dust and packed grit. Beneath the city’s heat. Moisture slept inside the stone. Mean. Stubborn. Enough.
Necro Ice awakened.
A translucent film blossomed beneath her soles. It spread in a widening sheet. Clear as polished glass. Hard as an executioner’s verdict. Cold rose from it in a quiet exhalation. The air nipped at exposed skin. Breath misted from her lips.
She drove one leg forward. The world obeyed.
Her first stride became a glide. Cobble and filth and sand blurred into a single frozen plane beneath her. She leaned into the motion. Weight low. Balance absolute. Long legs skimmed the newborn ice as if she had been born on a frozen sea. Sukegei tightened his hold with a startled curse. The mob tried to follow.
They did not understand.
Boots hit the slick surface. Feet slid in opposite directions. One man went down in a graceless sprawl. Another toppled atop him. A third attempted a heroic leap and landed flat on his back. The leading edge of the pursuit collapsed into a heap of limbs and invective. Tankards dropped. Knuckles cracked. Curses multiplied.
Ixqueya threaded a path between stalls and low walls. Necro Ice unfurled ahead of her with each push of her stride. The alley elongated into a frozen corridor. Lanterns smeared into streaks of amber. Mushroom villas flashed past. Their pale domes reflected her passage like misshapen moons.
She listened. Behind them the sounds thinned. Shoes scraped futilely. Someone roared that the devil herself had greased the stones. Someone else retched. It did not matter. They were falling away.
A narrow cut between two buildings opened on her right. Cloaked in shadow. Choked with refuse. Perfect.
She shifted her weight. The Necro Ice obeyed. They knifed across the mouth of the side alley. She let the conjured sheet vanish beneath her heels. Rough stone bit her soles again. Their speed bled down into a controlled slide. She stepped them into darkness. The last of the ice behind them began to vaporize. It left only damp grit. Nothing any priest could question.
Silence pooled.
The only sounds were Sukegei’s breathing and the faint drip of something unpleasant in the pile of rubbish nearby.
She allowed him to remain draped across her a single heartbeat longer. A contemptuous indulgence. Then she moved.
Her hand shot back. Fingers like iron closed around his wrist. She peeled him from her shoulders with effortless strength. A brisk twist of hip and arm converted his clinging into helpless momentum.
He flew.
A short arc. Just sufficient. He landed in a mound of refuse. Rotting vegetables collapsed under his weight. Broken crates snapped. Some unidentifiable sludge embraced his back. The impact sent up a small cloud of flies.
Ixqueya turned to face him.
Her silhouette blotted the alley mouth. Frost crept in delicate filigree along the rim of a rusted bucket at her feet. Her expression had set into a calm that looked almost gentle until one met her eyes. There was nothing gentle in those.
"Impressive," she said. Her voice was soft. It carried like a blade sliding out of a sheath. "Once again you have contrived to survive your own idiocy."
She advanced a single step. Her shadow lengthened over the heap of trash. Bits of wilted leaf crisped at her approach.
"Attend now, imp."
Each sentence came clipped. Precise. A judgment set to rhythm.
"You possessed one assignment. Singular. You were to enter a house devoted to flesh and secrecy. You were to coax its workers. You were to return with knowledge. Names. Rumors. Patterns. Instead you elected to extend credit you do not hold. To irritate every patron with your wit. To convert a quiet investigation into a public spectacle."
Her gaze did not waver. It pinned him to the filth more effectively than any rope.
"At this moment, that establishment holds a roomful of witnesses. They will remember you. The tone of your voice. The shape of your grin. The exact nature of your promises. They will remember the desert fool who ran beneath a hail of crockery and sandals. They will remember the giant of ice who permitted him to use her as a rampart. Some will sell that memory before the night is over. Coin will change hands for the story of us."
She let the certainty of that truth hang between them. The alley seemed to grow narrower.
"This is not cunning," she continued. "It is not roguish skill. It is incompetence lacquered in charm."
Her eyes moved from his face to the garbage clinging to his clothes.
"You prattle about being a candle. About warmth. About bedsides." Her mouth curved very slightly. The shape was poison, not humor. "You are indeed a candle. A cheap one. You sputter in every gust. You spit wax and smoke wherever you go. You leave stains and burn nothing important."
She inhaled. Frost thickened at her feet.
"And you are what I have already named you. A nettlesome fly. I would swat you out of the air and feel nothing. Circumstance denies me that satisfaction. Providence has seen fit to lash you to this inquiry. To graft you to my flank. We are both punished."
She inclined her head a fraction. Her tone grew even quieter. The quiet made it far more terrible.
"Therefore you will hear me. You will remember. You will not improvise again without explicit necessity. You will not treat every chamber as a stage for your ego. When I send you to speak, you speak. When I send you to listen, you listen. You do not set fire to the room merely to prove that you can run faster than the flames."
Her attention flicked toward the distant roar of the bazaar. Muted now. Safe. For the moment.
"Should you again transmute my work into farce, I will not conjure ice to save you. I will allow the mob to collect its debt. Or I will reach you first. My queen does not require your soul sorted gently from the rest. I am perfectly capable of delivering it pre-broken."
She straightened to her full height. The alley felt very small.
"Rise," she commanded. "Strip the garbage from your clothes. We are not finished. The madam you offended still owns records. Ledgers. Names. We will arrive at them by another corridor. You will find a way to be useful. Silently."
Her gaze hardened yet another degree.
"And hear this as well. If you ever leap onto my back again without dire cause, I will make you intimate with a wall. You will discover what it means to have every bone in your face acquainted with stone. More intimately than your skull became acquainted with my flesh."
She turned away. Frost shrank back with her.
"Now get up, imp," she said as she started toward the alley mouth. "Fate has decided we are shackled together. The least you can do is walk in a straight line while it lasts."
Raised voices belonged to such dens. Liquor made men bray. Flesh for hire made them howl. Furniture broke. Songs curtailed themselves into screams. This was the ordinary cacophony of vice. The city exhaled it with every dusk.
Then the sound shifted.
The laughter fractured. Glass did not merely break. It detonated. Once. Then again. A table collapsed. A heavy body struck timber. A woman shrieked not with feigned delight but with real outrage. Anger climbed the register. Debts were invoked. Knives were promised. The tone thickened into something uglier. Less revelry. More riot crammed inside painted walls.
Ixqueya’s brow drew the slightest furrow. Confusion flickered and died. Of course it was him.
The door flew open.
Sukegei erupted into the alley like a thrown weapon that had chosen its own trajectory. Cloak snapping. Boots skidding. His face carried that familiar, infuriating blend of delight and survival. Behind him surged a tide of enraged bodies. Tankards arced through lamplight. A hookah spun end over end. A sandal whirled with lethal accuracy. Shouts hurled accusations at his back. Thief. Liar. Bastard. Unpaying saint of bad credit.
She watched him hurtle toward her. For a moment there was only stillness inside her. The tableau wrote itself. The reprobate who had promised mastery. The stampede on his heels. The sandal scything through the air with priestly precision.
He came on without slowing. The leather missile carved for his skull. He twisted aside with the ease of a man trained by many afternoons of Zubaida’s airborne discipline. The sandal knifed past his cheek. He laughed. Of course he did. Then he leapt.
He did not ask. He assumed.
Hands clamped onto her shoulders. Weight slammed into her back. Boots scrambled against the solid curve of her hips. In an inelegant flurry he clambered up her like a drunken pilgrim scaling a forbidden altar. An arm hooked around her collar. His breath struck her ear. Hot. Breathless. Amused even now.
She could have rolled one shoulder and broken his grip. She could have stepped aside and allowed the mob to harvest him. For one crystalline instant she considered both outcomes. Then she chose a third.
If fate insisted on tying a mosquito to a glacier. The glacier would move.
Ixqueya inhaled. The breath sank through her body to her heels. She reached downward with will and memory. Beneath the dust and packed grit. Beneath the city’s heat. Moisture slept inside the stone. Mean. Stubborn. Enough.
Necro Ice awakened.
A translucent film blossomed beneath her soles. It spread in a widening sheet. Clear as polished glass. Hard as an executioner’s verdict. Cold rose from it in a quiet exhalation. The air nipped at exposed skin. Breath misted from her lips.
She drove one leg forward. The world obeyed.
Her first stride became a glide. Cobble and filth and sand blurred into a single frozen plane beneath her. She leaned into the motion. Weight low. Balance absolute. Long legs skimmed the newborn ice as if she had been born on a frozen sea. Sukegei tightened his hold with a startled curse. The mob tried to follow.
They did not understand.
Boots hit the slick surface. Feet slid in opposite directions. One man went down in a graceless sprawl. Another toppled atop him. A third attempted a heroic leap and landed flat on his back. The leading edge of the pursuit collapsed into a heap of limbs and invective. Tankards dropped. Knuckles cracked. Curses multiplied.
Ixqueya threaded a path between stalls and low walls. Necro Ice unfurled ahead of her with each push of her stride. The alley elongated into a frozen corridor. Lanterns smeared into streaks of amber. Mushroom villas flashed past. Their pale domes reflected her passage like misshapen moons.
She listened. Behind them the sounds thinned. Shoes scraped futilely. Someone roared that the devil herself had greased the stones. Someone else retched. It did not matter. They were falling away.
A narrow cut between two buildings opened on her right. Cloaked in shadow. Choked with refuse. Perfect.
She shifted her weight. The Necro Ice obeyed. They knifed across the mouth of the side alley. She let the conjured sheet vanish beneath her heels. Rough stone bit her soles again. Their speed bled down into a controlled slide. She stepped them into darkness. The last of the ice behind them began to vaporize. It left only damp grit. Nothing any priest could question.
Silence pooled.
The only sounds were Sukegei’s breathing and the faint drip of something unpleasant in the pile of rubbish nearby.
She allowed him to remain draped across her a single heartbeat longer. A contemptuous indulgence. Then she moved.
Her hand shot back. Fingers like iron closed around his wrist. She peeled him from her shoulders with effortless strength. A brisk twist of hip and arm converted his clinging into helpless momentum.
He flew.
A short arc. Just sufficient. He landed in a mound of refuse. Rotting vegetables collapsed under his weight. Broken crates snapped. Some unidentifiable sludge embraced his back. The impact sent up a small cloud of flies.
Ixqueya turned to face him.
Her silhouette blotted the alley mouth. Frost crept in delicate filigree along the rim of a rusted bucket at her feet. Her expression had set into a calm that looked almost gentle until one met her eyes. There was nothing gentle in those.
"Impressive," she said. Her voice was soft. It carried like a blade sliding out of a sheath. "Once again you have contrived to survive your own idiocy."
She advanced a single step. Her shadow lengthened over the heap of trash. Bits of wilted leaf crisped at her approach.
"Attend now, imp."
Each sentence came clipped. Precise. A judgment set to rhythm.
"You possessed one assignment. Singular. You were to enter a house devoted to flesh and secrecy. You were to coax its workers. You were to return with knowledge. Names. Rumors. Patterns. Instead you elected to extend credit you do not hold. To irritate every patron with your wit. To convert a quiet investigation into a public spectacle."
Her gaze did not waver. It pinned him to the filth more effectively than any rope.
"At this moment, that establishment holds a roomful of witnesses. They will remember you. The tone of your voice. The shape of your grin. The exact nature of your promises. They will remember the desert fool who ran beneath a hail of crockery and sandals. They will remember the giant of ice who permitted him to use her as a rampart. Some will sell that memory before the night is over. Coin will change hands for the story of us."
She let the certainty of that truth hang between them. The alley seemed to grow narrower.
"This is not cunning," she continued. "It is not roguish skill. It is incompetence lacquered in charm."
Her eyes moved from his face to the garbage clinging to his clothes.
"You prattle about being a candle. About warmth. About bedsides." Her mouth curved very slightly. The shape was poison, not humor. "You are indeed a candle. A cheap one. You sputter in every gust. You spit wax and smoke wherever you go. You leave stains and burn nothing important."
She inhaled. Frost thickened at her feet.
"And you are what I have already named you. A nettlesome fly. I would swat you out of the air and feel nothing. Circumstance denies me that satisfaction. Providence has seen fit to lash you to this inquiry. To graft you to my flank. We are both punished."
She inclined her head a fraction. Her tone grew even quieter. The quiet made it far more terrible.
"Therefore you will hear me. You will remember. You will not improvise again without explicit necessity. You will not treat every chamber as a stage for your ego. When I send you to speak, you speak. When I send you to listen, you listen. You do not set fire to the room merely to prove that you can run faster than the flames."
Her attention flicked toward the distant roar of the bazaar. Muted now. Safe. For the moment.
"Should you again transmute my work into farce, I will not conjure ice to save you. I will allow the mob to collect its debt. Or I will reach you first. My queen does not require your soul sorted gently from the rest. I am perfectly capable of delivering it pre-broken."
She straightened to her full height. The alley felt very small.
"Rise," she commanded. "Strip the garbage from your clothes. We are not finished. The madam you offended still owns records. Ledgers. Names. We will arrive at them by another corridor. You will find a way to be useful. Silently."
Her gaze hardened yet another degree.
"And hear this as well. If you ever leap onto my back again without dire cause, I will make you intimate with a wall. You will discover what it means to have every bone in your face acquainted with stone. More intimately than your skull became acquainted with my flesh."
She turned away. Frost shrank back with her.
"Now get up, imp," she said as she started toward the alley mouth. "Fate has decided we are shackled together. The least you can do is walk in a straight line while it lasts."
Sukegei did not have time to think before the ground went slick. One moment he was sprinting beside her. The next his boots lost traction and his instincts told him to grab the tallest, coldest thing in reach. His hands clamped over her shoulders. His legs locked around her hips. She surged forward on a sheet of ice that seemed to appear out of nothing. The alley turned into a blur of stone and light. Wind slapped his face. His stomach lurched.
He tightened his grip, chin bumping her shoulder as they shot through the street like a stolen sled. "For the record," he yelled over her head, half laughing, half hanging on for dear life, "if I am the cargo and you are the sleigh dog, we are going to have a very serious talk about pay." She did not answer. She just moved faster.
She cut hard into a side alley. His body swung with the turn. Then the ride ended. Her hand locked around his wrist. The world snapped sideways. He felt his feet leave the ground and had just enough time to think, ah, there it is again, before she threw him. He hit the trash heap shoulder first and vanished into it. Sukegei lay in the trash heap a moment, arms sprawled, staring up at a strip of filthy sky. Something cold and slimy slid down the side of his neck. He sighed.
"Right," he muttered. "That is definitely not holy oil." He pushed himself upright with a grunt, bits of wilted cabbage and mystery sludge clinging to his coat. A snapped rib of crate creaked under his boot as he stood. He shook himself like a dog coming out of a river. Rotten leaves flew. A tomato skin flopped off his shoulder and landed on his boot. While she flensed him with that cold, precise voice, he picked a strip of onion peel out of his hair and flicked it aside. His mouth twitched as she listed his crimes with all the care of a tax collector counting coins.
When she finished, he let a beat of silence hang. Then he gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. "You know," he said, "for someone who claims she wants to be rid of me, you do spend a lot of time describing me. In great detail. Very flattering. I feel seen." He slapped at his chest, trying to dislodge a smear of something that looked and smelled like it had died twice. "And that exit," he went on. "Ten out of ten. You skate like a vengeful winter spirit. I am hanging on, screaming, and you are gliding through the market like a dancer. For a she-brute, you are nimble. Very nimble."
His eyes ran up the length of her legs. Slowly. Appreciative. Entirely unapologetic. "Makes a man wonder," he added. "If you move like that on ice, what do you do on a mattress. Or are those sacred halls too holy for mortal pilgrims." He held up his hands before she could do more than glare. "Purely theological question," he said. "Strictly academic."
He bent to brush off his trousers. A cabbage leaf refused to let go of his thigh. He plucked it free and tossed it into the heap with a look of deep betrayal. "As for throwing me," he said, straightening. "You have a good arm. Nearly knocked my soul loose. I respect that. I do enjoy a woman who can throw me across a room and still have enough strength left to argue about it." He rolled his shoulders, winced, then chuckled.
"Next time warn a man before you turn him into garbage art, though. I would have struck a more heroic pose." He yawned, long and slow, as if her entire scolding had been a bedtime story. Then he slid a hand into his inner coat pocket and fished around. His fingers closed on something stiff and folded. "But since we are weighing usefulness," he said, "let us balance the scales a little."
He drew out a piece of papyrus, speckled with grime but intact. He snapped it once to shake off a clinging leaf, then held it up between two fingers. The faint light caught ink and seal. "While they were busy trying to cave my head in," he said, "I took a little stroll behind the counter. Turns out outrage is a fine distraction." He waggled the parchment at her. "Bill of sales. House records. Names. Schedules. Who paid for what and when. The sort of thing madams lock away from priests and tax men. And, I imagine, inquisitors of frosty foreign empires."
He tucked it safely back inside his coat and patted the pocket. "So yes," he said, grin widening into full wickedness. "I started a small riot. I also walked out with the thing you wanted. That is called multitasking." He tipped his head to her, mock respectful. "You can thank me later," he said. "I know you are playing hard to get. I am very patient. I will settle for an apology and some kind of reward for my guile once we catch your soul thief."
His eyes glittered as he leaned his shoulder against the wall, utterly at ease in the reek. "Maybe a drink. Maybe a story. Maybe you let me keep my teeth when you finally decide to mount me on a wall. I am flexible." He gave her a broad, shameless, shit-eating grin. "Face it, pussycat," he said. "You skate. I steal. You throw me. I bring you presents. We are terrifying together. And if you keep tossing me around like that, I might start thinking you are flirting back."
He tightened his grip, chin bumping her shoulder as they shot through the street like a stolen sled. "For the record," he yelled over her head, half laughing, half hanging on for dear life, "if I am the cargo and you are the sleigh dog, we are going to have a very serious talk about pay." She did not answer. She just moved faster.
She cut hard into a side alley. His body swung with the turn. Then the ride ended. Her hand locked around his wrist. The world snapped sideways. He felt his feet leave the ground and had just enough time to think, ah, there it is again, before she threw him. He hit the trash heap shoulder first and vanished into it. Sukegei lay in the trash heap a moment, arms sprawled, staring up at a strip of filthy sky. Something cold and slimy slid down the side of his neck. He sighed.
"Right," he muttered. "That is definitely not holy oil." He pushed himself upright with a grunt, bits of wilted cabbage and mystery sludge clinging to his coat. A snapped rib of crate creaked under his boot as he stood. He shook himself like a dog coming out of a river. Rotten leaves flew. A tomato skin flopped off his shoulder and landed on his boot. While she flensed him with that cold, precise voice, he picked a strip of onion peel out of his hair and flicked it aside. His mouth twitched as she listed his crimes with all the care of a tax collector counting coins.
When she finished, he let a beat of silence hang. Then he gave her a lazy, lopsided grin. "You know," he said, "for someone who claims she wants to be rid of me, you do spend a lot of time describing me. In great detail. Very flattering. I feel seen." He slapped at his chest, trying to dislodge a smear of something that looked and smelled like it had died twice. "And that exit," he went on. "Ten out of ten. You skate like a vengeful winter spirit. I am hanging on, screaming, and you are gliding through the market like a dancer. For a she-brute, you are nimble. Very nimble."
His eyes ran up the length of her legs. Slowly. Appreciative. Entirely unapologetic. "Makes a man wonder," he added. "If you move like that on ice, what do you do on a mattress. Or are those sacred halls too holy for mortal pilgrims." He held up his hands before she could do more than glare. "Purely theological question," he said. "Strictly academic."
He bent to brush off his trousers. A cabbage leaf refused to let go of his thigh. He plucked it free and tossed it into the heap with a look of deep betrayal. "As for throwing me," he said, straightening. "You have a good arm. Nearly knocked my soul loose. I respect that. I do enjoy a woman who can throw me across a room and still have enough strength left to argue about it." He rolled his shoulders, winced, then chuckled.
"Next time warn a man before you turn him into garbage art, though. I would have struck a more heroic pose." He yawned, long and slow, as if her entire scolding had been a bedtime story. Then he slid a hand into his inner coat pocket and fished around. His fingers closed on something stiff and folded. "But since we are weighing usefulness," he said, "let us balance the scales a little."
He drew out a piece of papyrus, speckled with grime but intact. He snapped it once to shake off a clinging leaf, then held it up between two fingers. The faint light caught ink and seal. "While they were busy trying to cave my head in," he said, "I took a little stroll behind the counter. Turns out outrage is a fine distraction." He waggled the parchment at her. "Bill of sales. House records. Names. Schedules. Who paid for what and when. The sort of thing madams lock away from priests and tax men. And, I imagine, inquisitors of frosty foreign empires."
He tucked it safely back inside his coat and patted the pocket. "So yes," he said, grin widening into full wickedness. "I started a small riot. I also walked out with the thing you wanted. That is called multitasking." He tipped his head to her, mock respectful. "You can thank me later," he said. "I know you are playing hard to get. I am very patient. I will settle for an apology and some kind of reward for my guile once we catch your soul thief."
His eyes glittered as he leaned his shoulder against the wall, utterly at ease in the reek. "Maybe a drink. Maybe a story. Maybe you let me keep my teeth when you finally decide to mount me on a wall. I am flexible." He gave her a broad, shameless, shit-eating grin. "Face it, pussycat," he said. "You skate. I steal. You throw me. I bring you presents. We are terrifying together. And if you keep tossing me around like that, I might start thinking you are flirting back."
Hoarfrost crystallized in her eyes until the alley seemed to constrict around it.
Ixqueya turned fully toward him. The hoarfrost mistress regarded the dark-skinned elf as if he were an eyesore on otherwise serviceable stone. The wind slid between the close walls. It caught her feathered crown. It drank the cold from her skin and carried that polar disposition straight into him.
He leaned there. Elbow to crumbling brick. Stinking of refuse and low-grade bravado. Onion peel in his hair. Cabbage on his coat. A shit-eating grin cutting his face in half. He jabbered. He primped. He swathed his own incompetence in humor and named it cleverness.
She answered first with a single sharp breath.
A scoff.
Then she rolled her eyes. A small. Elegant motion. The gesticulation of someone conditioned to doldrums. Someone who had weathered far more precarious fools than this and outlived all of them.
Yet when the papyrus flashed in his hand her gaze tightened. Ink. Seals. Marks of trade. Real. Not imagined. Not gloated into existence. He had, by some perverse alignment of chance and cunning, done something correctly.
Surprise moved through her mind for one heartbeat. It did not reach her face.
"How curious," she said. Her tone remained glacial. "You plunge a perfectly ordinary probe into travesty. You invoked a mob. You bathe in vegetable rot. You make yourself notorious in a district where we required silence. Yet in the dregs of your own making you retrieve a document of actual consequence."
Her eyes dropped to the pocket where he had hidden it. Then returned to his.
"That parchment possesses value. You do not. Learn that distinction. Live inside it."
She took a slow step toward him. Frost spidered along the rim of a broken bucket behind his heel. The air turned thin.
"You stand there covered in garbage and self-satisfaction. You gabble about multitasking. You congratulate yourself because one fragment of your charge did not end in catastrophe." Her voice did not rise. It did not need to. "You resemble a half-trained pooch that returns with the bird it was sent to fetch. After it has chewed the carcass and torn the field to mud."
Her gaze sharpened.
"You are perhaps the brightest inbred ignoramus in all these sands. That miserable spark of cleverness is the only reason your heart still beats within reach of my hand."
His mouth twisted. More grin than smile. More lust than respect. The obscene little pet name left him. Pussycat. He said it as if he expected it to land.
Ixqueya closed her eyes for a moment.
Her jaw flexed. A low sound escaped her throat. Not quite a groan. Not quite a laugh. Something far less lenient than either.
When she opened her eyes again, they were emptied of all softness.
"Do not ever call me that again," she said. Her tone fell to a quiet register that carried more danger than any shout. "Cats are pampered. They are stroked. They clog chairs and beds and are forgiven for their uselessness. I am not kept. I am not stroked."
Her gaze moved over him. From filthy boots. To stained coat. To that irrepressible grin that did not know when to die.
"In my estimation you are a defective dog that no one has yet found the will to cull," she continued. "You bite when told to sit. You dash toward danger when commanded to hold. You drag half-rotted trophies to the threshold and expect a pat on the head. No household truly wants such a beast. Pity intervenes. Habit intercedes. So it remains. Half tool. Half burden."
She lifted her hand. Palm open. Fingers steady as carved bone.
"Now," she said. "Place the bill of sales in my hand."
Her eyes narrowed. The cold in them became absolute.
"You will do so immediately. Or I will take that pitiful little worm you call a cock. I will snap it across my knee. You will spend the remainder of your short and unimpressive life impotent. In symbol and in practice. Test me if you doubt the gravity of this assurance."
She held his gaze. Unblinking.
"The document. Now."
Once he surrendered the papyrus she took it with meticulous care. She examined the seal. She gauged the script. She measured the dates against her memory. Then she folded it once. Exactly once. No wasted crease. No wasted motion. She slipped it into the inner layers of her garments. Close to her body. Out of his reach for as long as he breathed.
"You will hear no tribute from me," Ixqueya said. "You have scrabbled from total uselessness to the standing of a marginally serviceable liability. That is the full height of your ascent. If you ache for applause, return to the brothel. Stand upon a table. Wiggle. Perhaps the sandals will strike you with more affection next time."
She turned from him.
Authority draped itself across her frame like a mantle of black ice. Heavy. Inevitable.
"Walk. Imp," she said. Each word is a discrete blow. "You have shown you can fetch when accident favors you. Now you will prove that you can follow. You will keep your mouth closed except when necessity forces it open. You will attempt to think before you act. I realize this may be a novel discipline. You will attempt it regardless."
She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes were winter in its purest expression. No mercy. Only calculus.
"Understand this. Should you ever again compel me to choose between the integrity of my sleuthing and the preservation of your hide. I will choose correctly. The ledger will mark one more extinguished life. The sand will accept one more inconsequential offering. The Tree will adjust its accounts by a trifling degree."
She faced the alley’s mouth once more. The sounds of the bazaar floated in. Distant. Oblivious.
"Your name will not trouble the ice," she finished. "Only the brief absence you leave behind. For as long as you still flicker, do everything within your stunted power not to make that absence an improvement."
Ixqueya turned fully toward him. The hoarfrost mistress regarded the dark-skinned elf as if he were an eyesore on otherwise serviceable stone. The wind slid between the close walls. It caught her feathered crown. It drank the cold from her skin and carried that polar disposition straight into him.
He leaned there. Elbow to crumbling brick. Stinking of refuse and low-grade bravado. Onion peel in his hair. Cabbage on his coat. A shit-eating grin cutting his face in half. He jabbered. He primped. He swathed his own incompetence in humor and named it cleverness.
She answered first with a single sharp breath.
A scoff.
Then she rolled her eyes. A small. Elegant motion. The gesticulation of someone conditioned to doldrums. Someone who had weathered far more precarious fools than this and outlived all of them.
Yet when the papyrus flashed in his hand her gaze tightened. Ink. Seals. Marks of trade. Real. Not imagined. Not gloated into existence. He had, by some perverse alignment of chance and cunning, done something correctly.
Surprise moved through her mind for one heartbeat. It did not reach her face.
"How curious," she said. Her tone remained glacial. "You plunge a perfectly ordinary probe into travesty. You invoked a mob. You bathe in vegetable rot. You make yourself notorious in a district where we required silence. Yet in the dregs of your own making you retrieve a document of actual consequence."
Her eyes dropped to the pocket where he had hidden it. Then returned to his.
"That parchment possesses value. You do not. Learn that distinction. Live inside it."
She took a slow step toward him. Frost spidered along the rim of a broken bucket behind his heel. The air turned thin.
"You stand there covered in garbage and self-satisfaction. You gabble about multitasking. You congratulate yourself because one fragment of your charge did not end in catastrophe." Her voice did not rise. It did not need to. "You resemble a half-trained pooch that returns with the bird it was sent to fetch. After it has chewed the carcass and torn the field to mud."
Her gaze sharpened.
"You are perhaps the brightest inbred ignoramus in all these sands. That miserable spark of cleverness is the only reason your heart still beats within reach of my hand."
His mouth twisted. More grin than smile. More lust than respect. The obscene little pet name left him. Pussycat. He said it as if he expected it to land.
Ixqueya closed her eyes for a moment.
Her jaw flexed. A low sound escaped her throat. Not quite a groan. Not quite a laugh. Something far less lenient than either.
When she opened her eyes again, they were emptied of all softness.
"Do not ever call me that again," she said. Her tone fell to a quiet register that carried more danger than any shout. "Cats are pampered. They are stroked. They clog chairs and beds and are forgiven for their uselessness. I am not kept. I am not stroked."
Her gaze moved over him. From filthy boots. To stained coat. To that irrepressible grin that did not know when to die.
"In my estimation you are a defective dog that no one has yet found the will to cull," she continued. "You bite when told to sit. You dash toward danger when commanded to hold. You drag half-rotted trophies to the threshold and expect a pat on the head. No household truly wants such a beast. Pity intervenes. Habit intercedes. So it remains. Half tool. Half burden."
She lifted her hand. Palm open. Fingers steady as carved bone.
"Now," she said. "Place the bill of sales in my hand."
Her eyes narrowed. The cold in them became absolute.
"You will do so immediately. Or I will take that pitiful little worm you call a cock. I will snap it across my knee. You will spend the remainder of your short and unimpressive life impotent. In symbol and in practice. Test me if you doubt the gravity of this assurance."
She held his gaze. Unblinking.
"The document. Now."
Once he surrendered the papyrus she took it with meticulous care. She examined the seal. She gauged the script. She measured the dates against her memory. Then she folded it once. Exactly once. No wasted crease. No wasted motion. She slipped it into the inner layers of her garments. Close to her body. Out of his reach for as long as he breathed.
"You will hear no tribute from me," Ixqueya said. "You have scrabbled from total uselessness to the standing of a marginally serviceable liability. That is the full height of your ascent. If you ache for applause, return to the brothel. Stand upon a table. Wiggle. Perhaps the sandals will strike you with more affection next time."
She turned from him.
Authority draped itself across her frame like a mantle of black ice. Heavy. Inevitable.
"Walk. Imp," she said. Each word is a discrete blow. "You have shown you can fetch when accident favors you. Now you will prove that you can follow. You will keep your mouth closed except when necessity forces it open. You will attempt to think before you act. I realize this may be a novel discipline. You will attempt it regardless."
She looked back over her shoulder. Her eyes were winter in its purest expression. No mercy. Only calculus.
"Understand this. Should you ever again compel me to choose between the integrity of my sleuthing and the preservation of your hide. I will choose correctly. The ledger will mark one more extinguished life. The sand will accept one more inconsequential offering. The Tree will adjust its accounts by a trifling degree."
She faced the alley’s mouth once more. The sounds of the bazaar floated in. Distant. Oblivious.
"Your name will not trouble the ice," she finished. "Only the brief absence you leave behind. For as long as you still flicker, do everything within your stunted power not to make that absence an improvement."
Sukegei let her hold that frozen stare a heartbeat longer than was wise. Then he sighed and shoved a hand into his coat. "All right, all right," he said. "Keep your ice on." He pulled the folded papyrus free and stepped close enough to place it in her outstretched palm. Her fingers swallowed it. Long. Broad. Calloused in a way no court lady’s ever were.
He glanced at her hand. Then up. Then back to her hand again. "Gods," he said. "Those are not lady’s hands. Rough as old leather. Big too. I would wager you have snapped more than a few short swords in your heyday." The pun hung there. He let it. He cleared his throat, a mock-serious little sound. "For the record," he added. "I still have some use for my massive claymore. So if it is all the same to you, hoarfrost, perhaps leave that particular weapon unbroken until this is done."
He scratched his jaw, smearing trash a little wider, and grinned. "Tell you what," he went on. "If I live through this. If I somehow manage to find a woman mad enough to bear my children. I may name my first daughter after you. Little Ixqueya. Strong shoulders. Terrifying glare. Terrible taste in company. How would you like that. Your legacy carried on in some screaming sand brat who throws men into trash heaps for fun."
He lifted his hands in a small shrug. "Of course, if you keep threatening to geld me, this will remain a theoretical honor. Difficult to sire heirs with a broken blade, as you so lovingly put it." He leaned back against the wall again. Easy. Loose. The way a man leans in a tavern when he knows a fight might start but is not ready to put his drink down. His eyes did not once move from her chest. Every time his gaze seemed about to climb higher, it drifted back to the tight stretch of cloth and the way frost-lit ornaments framed the swell beneath.
"So," he said. "All this sermon about ledgers and dogs and snapping dirks in half. What was actually on that parchment. Anything useful. Or did I just get myself banned from my fifth favorite brothel for nothing." He tilted his head. Still staring at her bosom. Smile lazy and provoking. "Do tell me I did not risk life, limb, and future children for a list of laundry deliveries and who ordered extra olives with their supper."
His eyes stayed fixed where they were. A man openly admiring something he knew he would never touch and making no attempt to lie about it. "Go on then, ice queen," he murmured. "Make all the threats you want. Just admit I stole you something worth more than the vegetables you threw me into."
He glanced at her hand. Then up. Then back to her hand again. "Gods," he said. "Those are not lady’s hands. Rough as old leather. Big too. I would wager you have snapped more than a few short swords in your heyday." The pun hung there. He let it. He cleared his throat, a mock-serious little sound. "For the record," he added. "I still have some use for my massive claymore. So if it is all the same to you, hoarfrost, perhaps leave that particular weapon unbroken until this is done."
He scratched his jaw, smearing trash a little wider, and grinned. "Tell you what," he went on. "If I live through this. If I somehow manage to find a woman mad enough to bear my children. I may name my first daughter after you. Little Ixqueya. Strong shoulders. Terrifying glare. Terrible taste in company. How would you like that. Your legacy carried on in some screaming sand brat who throws men into trash heaps for fun."
He lifted his hands in a small shrug. "Of course, if you keep threatening to geld me, this will remain a theoretical honor. Difficult to sire heirs with a broken blade, as you so lovingly put it." He leaned back against the wall again. Easy. Loose. The way a man leans in a tavern when he knows a fight might start but is not ready to put his drink down. His eyes did not once move from her chest. Every time his gaze seemed about to climb higher, it drifted back to the tight stretch of cloth and the way frost-lit ornaments framed the swell beneath.
"So," he said. "All this sermon about ledgers and dogs and snapping dirks in half. What was actually on that parchment. Anything useful. Or did I just get myself banned from my fifth favorite brothel for nothing." He tilted his head. Still staring at her bosom. Smile lazy and provoking. "Do tell me I did not risk life, limb, and future children for a list of laundry deliveries and who ordered extra olives with their supper."
His eyes stayed fixed where they were. A man openly admiring something he knew he would never touch and making no attempt to lie about it. "Go on then, ice queen," he murmured. "Make all the threats you want. Just admit I stole you something worth more than the vegetables you threw me into."
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