City of Swords Read Free Page A

weightless thing in his hands. It caught the blade, but only for a moment.
    “Infern!” the chain wielder gasped.
    Annja took advantage of his momentary surprise to slice down with the sword. She pulled her punch, using just enough force to wound him, but not cut off his arm. The pain made him drop the chain. Some of it landed on her bare feet, adding to her aches.
    “Ceda,” he said, grasping his bleeding arm and holding it close. Behind him, the others took off running. Annja realized they’d been the same two who had run away at the beginning…and come back with reinforcements. Would they return with still more? “Ceda.” He bent over, his back rounding and making him look like a turtle. “Ceda.”
    “I suspect that means you surrender.” Annja willed the sword away and, despite her pain, shoved the man toward the wall.
    In the shadows there, Annja found her purse, which she had dropped when she’d picked the fight with the first youth. She grabbed it, took her cell phone out and called the police, quickly explaining in French that she’d been accosted by a Roma gang and that some vigilantes came to her aid. The tale was half-true. Prodding the man to stay ahead of her, she nudged him toward her shoes, which she gingerly put on. Then she directed him to sit near one of his fallen fellows.
    “Wait,” she told him. “Do you understand English? French?”
    He nodded.
    “Wait for the police.”
    When she could hear sirens, she returned to the shadows, following the wall back to the old train station. And toward where she had earlier sensed someone else watching her.
    “Roux.”
    “You’re hurt.”
    “I’ll heal.”
    “Rather quickly no doubt.”
    The wail of the sirens grew louder. Annja glanced toward the men, making sure none of them had bolted.
    “And what was all of that for, Annja Creed?”
    She touched her arm, feeling the sting from the bullet and the warmth of her blood. There was a first-aid kit in her suitcase at the hotel; she always traveled with one.
    They kept close to the front of the massive Gare du Nord. The original train station had been demolished a century and a half ago, deemed too small. This huge affair, built in its place, had been recently added to. Designed by French architect Jacques Ignace Hittorff, it was one of Annja’s favorite places in Paris, the facade created around a triumphal arch, the main cast-iron support beams supplied by an ironworks in Glasgow. In daylight, you could see eight statues along the building’s cornice, each representing international destinations—London, Brussels, Vienna, Warsaw, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Berlin, Cologne. Annja and Roux passed beneath the one representing Vienna.
    The station served all of northern Europe, so was a beehive of activity around the clock…though not so much outside the building this time of night. Well past midnight now, there were a few souls about, some gaping down the street in the direction of the downed gang.
    From the cover of their vantage point, she and Roux watched as a police car arrived, its flashing ice-blue lights cutting through the thinning fog. A van pulled in behind it and policemen spilled out. Like swarming ants, they took control of the Romanies, lifting the unconscious forms and handcuffing the older one. Annja couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the older man pointed with his head toward the shadows and the train station.
    Annja started to move again, as fast as she dared without drawing attention. She pulled Roux along with her.
    They reached the far end of the station and turned the corner.
    “Didn’t want to stick around and explain yourself to the police?”
    “I’ll be in France for the better part of another week,” Annja said, changing the subject.
    “Certainly enough time for you to pick another fight with the Romany gangs.”
    She didn’t bother to answer that.
    “More of the underground? For your television program?”
    How did Roux know—? Stupid. Somehow he always