The Tower of Bashan (9 page)

But the day is finally over. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.

Guards hustled out the normal foot traffic that dirtied the blue marble spanning the area around the tower. All that remained were people like him cleaning and preparing the space for another busy day.

Andrasta had barely spoken to him over the last few days, too angry with their lack of progress.

She trusts me and I keep failing her. I’ve barely learned anything about the tower’s entrance. Perhaps it’s just better to finish the day and quit.

He walked by a stand selling miniature versions of the tower carved from ivory. Rondel paused briefly to admire the detail.
About the only thing worth purchasing around here. Too bad most people can’t afford to pay what the pieces are worth.

He rounded a corner and froze at the recognition of familiar faces. Before him stood two large brothers from the nation of Kurk. Like others of their nationality, the two looked like descendants of giants, each standing over seven and a half feet tall. Black cloaks draped over wide shoulders. Pale skin and hard, jutting features gave them the appearance of conjured demons.

They definitely fell off the same branch of the ugly tree. And it must have been a high one.

Like many from Kurk, the brothers bore names that few could pronounce if written due to an absurd amount of apostrophes. He often referred to them as Dimwit and Nitwit. They worked the area around the tower doing similar work as he and Andrasta. Rondel noted that with their size they’d make excellent leg breakers or bodyguards for one of the various local crime organizations. Andrasta had joked that they had to know which part of the body was the leg first.

He smiled, recalling the rare jest from his partner. The grin faded when he saw that Dimwit carried a busted lip and Nitwit a black eye. He opened his mouth to ask what had happened when Nitwit cut him off. He pulled aside a curtain that led to the back of a vendor’s stand. “Drop the sack and get inside.”

“Yeah, then take off your pants and small clothes,” said Dimwit.

Rondel shook his head, sure he must have heard incorrectly. “What?”

Nitwit drew steel, a rusted long sword. “You heard us.”

Rondel slowly lowered his sack, allowing his good hand to slide under his ragged robes. Fingers tickled the hilt of his short sword. “Look guys, wanting me to strip naked is a pretty big request. One I’m not keen on doing. So how about you tell me what this is about?”

“You owe us,” said Dimwit

“I owe you by getting naked?”

Dimwit nodded as if the explanation was complete.

“Can you elaborate on that?”

“Elaborate?”

“Give me more information.”

“We wanted your sister. And she wanted us. She gave us looks.”

Andrasta?
“What sort of looks?”

“Heavy breathing. Small eyes,” said Nitwit. “You know, what every woman looks like when she wants sex.”

Unbelievable. These idiots tried to hit on Andrasta. Well, that explains the eye and the lip.
“Take it from me, that’s not lust. That’s anger.”

“Maybe, but we went to get sex.”

“And that didn’t go well, I take it?”
I’m actually surprised the two of you are alive.

“She moves quick.”

“Yeah, and she hits hard,” added Dimwit, rubbing his jaw.

I can vouch for that.

Rondel closed his hand around the hilt of his blade, but kept it hidden beneath his clothes. “I still don’t understand where I come into this.”

“We still want sex,” said Nitwit. “She’s your sister. You’ll do instead.”

Rondel’s eyes widened.
I can’t believe I just heard that.
“You do realize that I’m not a woman, right?”

Nitwit shrugged. “We prefer women, but we take whatever.”

“Besides, you are smaller like a woman,” said Dimwit. “Smaller than your sister anyway.”

Rondel stood straighter, throwing aside his false persona while drawing his sword. “You’ll find me less forgiving than her.”

Nitwit chuckled and stepped forward.

Too angry at the situation, and too scared about where it could go, Rondel didn’t bother with dancing around. He darted inside, slicing the Kurk’s forearm. Dark blood ran across pale skin. Nitwit growled and raised his blade. He moved faster than expected. Rondel deflected the worst of the blow, but the impact sent a lancing pain up his arm and shoulder. He barely avoided the follow up strike, quickly countering with a stab at the Kurk’s face.

Nitwit bellowed, dropping his weapon, hands going up to his right eye.

Rondel moved in closer to finish the job, but Dimwit moved faster than expected and came to his brother’s aid. Huge bearlike arms pinned his own at his sides. He whipped his heels back toward Dimwit’s crotch and shins, but could not connect with either. The behemoth squeezed harder. Rondel began to yell, but a hand so large it nearly engulfed his face, clamped over his mouth. Rondel bit down and tasted blood, but the Kurk didn’t even flinch.

Dimwit chided his brother. “Quit crying. Help me undress him. He squirms.”

“He took my eye!” Nitwit removed his hands, exposing a bloody hole.

Rondel would have found satisfaction in the damage, if not for his current situation.
Gods, I avoided rape all those years on the road in pompous clothes. I never once suffered such a fate in prison. Now, when I’m more skilled to defend myself than ever, it’s going to happen at the mercy of men as large as bulls.

A muffled whimper passed through his lips and into the Kurk’s palm as he tried to shout Andrasta’s name to no avail. His heart raced. Sweat dripped down his spine.

“You have another eye.”

“It hurts. I should go first.”

“Why? You let him stick you. I should go first. I didn’t let him stick me. I’m smart. I grabbed him when he was distracted.”

“But I distracted him!”

The two brothers continued to argue. Dimwit’s grip grew tighter over Rondel’s face as the intensity of the dispute increased. He could not break free. His panic worsened as it became nearly impossible to breath with his mouth and nose covered.

This is how I’m going to die? By accident while two brothers argue who’ll have their way with me first?

Considering his other option, death suddenly didn’t seem so bad after all.

Nitwit gestured wildly with his hands and then stopped midsentence. His chin dropped, eyes bulging. A half foot of steel protruded from the Kurk’s chest. It twisted and slid loose. Nitwit collapsed.

The hand around Rondel’s mouth fell away as did the massive arms around his body. He struck the ground hard, gasping for air. Between the coughs, hacks, and hurried intakes of breath, Rondel managed to get his hands and knees under him. A loud thud landed beside him. Someone had relieved Dimwit of his head.

Not like he was using it anyway.

A strong hand reached under his arm and yanked him up. His knees wobbled, and he fell forward into Andrasta’s chest. She righted him, grasped his shoulders, and looked into his eyes. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t understand anything because his heart thumped so loudly in his ears.

“It sounds like you’re talking underwater,” he managed to mumble.

“I said we need to get out of here. Someone just alerted the guards. We don’t want to get caught.”

They’ll never believe that a simpleton killed two Kurks. Our cover is blown.

She thrust his sword back in his hand and took off, gesturing for Rondel to follow. Somehow his limbs found life and he chased after his partner.

* * *

Lela walked the streets of Bashan without any real purpose other than to not be at her tiny apartment with Kunal. She never called the place home. Her home resided over Kunal’s old tailor shop where she once had her own room and a real bed. It was a place where the two had shared meals, played games, and even sang songs. Uncle would always insist on singing the woman’s lead on
Flowers Fair
, and his high falsesetto never failed to send her into a fit of giggles, especially the way he fluttered his eyelashes when doing so.

Our neighbors weren’t quite so fond of his voice though
. With a grin she recalled the old woman in the next building over who would complain of dying cats.

Her smile faded. The place she rested her head each night held none of those fond memories, especially now with Kunal pacing about, muttering to himself, and rubbing his hands to cease their shaking.

Hunger. Pain. Fear of the unknown. Those will be my memories of that apartment. Simply better than sleeping in a gutter.

Shouting rang out.

Lela spun to her right, so caught up in thought, she hadn’t noticed her proximity to the walls around the Tower of Bashan.

It’s coming from inside.

The shouting grew in volume as more joined the chorus. The voices came from a multitude of languages, most prominently, the common tongue of Kindi.
Guards,
she realized, forgetting all about her previous sorrows. Broken pottery, and snapping wood added to the yells.

The sounds are moving to the western gate.

Curiosity got the best of her and she sprinted toward a wide-canopied, unusually large, gulmohar tree. It stood twice as high as the walls, and would give her a clear view of the western entrance. Despite her recently treated skin and her new sari, she climbed. Three quarters of the way up, she inched out on one of the narrow limbs, bare feet balancing on the smooth bark. She pushed aside bright-green leaves and deep-red flowers that smelled cleaner than the city around her. Her sari blended well with the blooming foliage.

Inside the walls, two figures barreled their ways through the sea of vendor stands, toppling carts, crates, barrels, and even the vendors themselves in an effort to slow the trailing guardsmen.

Emerging from the last of the stands and onto the path that led toward the gate, swords clanged with two guardsmen. Both went down quickly.

The taller one moves like the woman that saved me in the alley.

Lela’s stomach dropped. She squinted, noting the comparative size of the two figures. Long braids flopped behind the larger of the two.

That
is
the woman!

The two foreigners made it through the gate with a handful of men on their heels.

She kept her eyes on the guardsmen while climbing down the tree, graciously accepting the scrapes on shin and forearm. She’d worry about damage to the sari later. She couldn’t let them get away.

* * *

Outside the walls, Andrasta led the guards down several twisting alleys before losing them at a narrow intersection. Rondel thankfully kept pace, still huffing for air while rubbing at his mouth and throat. She finally slowed at a long street filled with various shops and businesses, most of which were closed for the day. She and Rondel did their best to appear normal in spite of their nationalities and attire.

She waited until her anger had calmed and Rondel’s breathing sounded more normal before speaking. “What was that all about?”

His neck reddened. “It was nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He sighed and told her.

“You left out the part where they said you were small like most women.”

He halted. “What? You heard that?”

She shrugged.

“But . . . why . . . how could you do that to me?”

“What? When Dimwit and Nitwit tried to corner me I got out of it without blowing our cover since you swore up and down that was the best option we had to get into the tower and steal the jewel. Why couldn’t you do the same?”

“Because I’m not the fighter that you are.”

She gave him a dismissive look and started walking again. “I’ve been training you for over a year. You should have been able to handle them both. That’s why I waited. I kept expecting you to get out of it on your own. I knew the second I got involved, someone was going to notice and alert the guards.” She paused. “The problem is that you panicked because of the situation.”

“Can you blame me? Getting raped is a man’s worst nightmare.”

She grabbed him by the shoulder, spun him, and slammed a fist into his gut. Rondel folded in half at the waist.

A part of Andrasta felt sorry for the blow. Another part wanted to strike him again.

“What was that for?” he finally croaked.

She seethed. “For your stupidity. Anyone else and I would have done more. You said that like you think getting raped is somehow less of a nightmare for a woman?”

He crawled to his feet, hunched over. “I’m sorry. It probably did come out wrong. I’m still trying to collect my thoughts. I think I have my head on straight now.”

“Are you sure? You keep telling me that you aren’t going to let what happened in Erba cloud your thinking, yet I keep seeing more and more signs that say otherwise.”