Mirror Sight Read Free

of pain.
    She thrust the staff forward again, battering the metal handle into the bridge of the third assailant’s nose. She felt warm splatters across her face, and he reeled away clutching at his bleeding nose.
    Not bad,
Karigan thought, for being one-handed and pretty much one-legged.
    She made to retreat from the alley, only to find half a dozen more figures blocking her way.

MORPHIA
    K arigan backed away as the thugs advanced on her. One of her original assailants recovered enough to grab her from behind. She smashed the heel of her boot into his instep, and he hopped away howling. The others paused as one as if reassessing their prey, indistinct in their ragged cloaks. She held her staff in a defensive position, keeping an ear open to anyone creeping up on her from behind. Mostly she heard whimpering from that quarter.
    Her limbs quivered from having expended so much of her energy in Blackveil, as well as in the streets of this nameless city. Her mauled leg was likely to give out at any time now, and truly she wanted nothing more than to drop where she stood, but that would mean worse consequences.
    “Put down yer stick, girlie,” one of the thugs said, “and we won’t hurt ya. Real gentlemen we are, ain’t we, boys?”
    The others answered with affirmative grunts.
    “Let me go, and I won’t hurt
you,”
she said, her dry throat making her voice harsh.
    “Got ya some sass, eh? There’s them that’d pay good for the likes of you.”
    Karigan did not wait for them to make the first move. She charged into them with a guttural yell, staff humming as the metal handle thudded into the leader’s skull. She had hoped they’d scatter after that, but they grabbed for her, their rags rancid with filth. The staff became entangled in their arms, and when one kicked her injured leg, she sank with a moan, and they descended on her as predators on wounded prey.
    Karigan momentarily blanked out beneath their vile stench as they tore at her greatcoat, tried to force the staff from her hand, groped her. It would be so easy to let go, to give up. . . .
    In another moment they were inexplicably off her. She shook her head, the air freshened around her. The predators scattered as a new presence swung a club and threw them aside.
    She couldn’t move. She lay on the paving only able to watch as the last thug loped away, the one who had fought them off looming over her, a man, she observed, from the silhouette of his profile. The shadows of his hood obscured his features, but she felt his gaze upon her. Was he her savior or a new danger?
    He tossed the club aside, and it clattered loudly on the paving. He knelt beside her and helped her sit up. He produced a nondescript cloak from nowhere and tossed it around her shoulders.
    “It is foolish to be out here at this hour unescorted,” he said.
    “Who are you?” she asked.
    He did not answer but helped her to stand. She’d kept a death grip on her staff and did not loosen it now.
    “Can you walk?” he asked.
    “Not very well.”
    “Lean on me, then.”
    She did not. “Who are you, and where are we going?”
    He made an impatient noise from beneath his hood. “I am the one who drove off your attackers. I am taking you to safety.”
    Karigan wanted to trust him, to pass the responsibility of her safety on to someone else, but could she trust this man? Really, at this point, how much of a choice did she have? With all her injuries, the lapse in her ability to fade, and not knowing this city and its ways, her choices had diminished significantly. So far the man had only aided her. Coming to a decision, she allowed him to put his arm around her so he could bear some of her weight. At least he did not smell offensive.
    He led her toward the alley’s outlet and paused to peer both ways down the street. He hissed and suddenly pulled her back into the concealment of the shadows.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “Shhh. You ask too many questions.”
    She had a sharp retort on her