Esker took up his swordspear and burst out of the columned building, heedless of any Tungsten Kid. Mayet had not gone far; his soldier’s eyes caught her running across what perhaps had once been a green around the building, toward the streets where the ciudores had run across the Kid’s claim-edge, dragging Ozier’s staff across the ground in one hand.
She disappeared into the ruined buildings as he watched, but he had her position and he covered the ground as lightly as a deer. By the time she noticed his pursuit, he was too close for her to outrun. Her face was ragged with rage and exhaustion; she turned to throw the staff at him, but her grip slipped from sweat and all she did was tip it over so it fell in his direction. He seized it in the same hand as his shortspear, catching hold of her collar with the other. He lifted her and hauled her into the shadow of a ruined storefront as easily as he might move a kitten. He released her gently; when she tried to dodge around him for the door, he blocked her with the haft of his swordspear, then seized her collar again and pulled her slowly but surely back in.
“What on earth do you expect to do with this?” he asked, waving Ozier’s staff. “You can’t sing.”
I gave a fair shake at talking to you, Sr. Sepherene, said the girl, but you and your comrades seem to prefer squabbling to action.
“That’s fair enough,” said Esker. “I’ll cop to that. If I sit, will you sit? And not run?”
Mayet looked up at him a long stretch, then took three steps back and dropped to the floor. Esker did the same, laying the staff and swordspear across his lap.
“Please,” said Esker. “Explain to me the use you thought to find in stealing that staff. Perhaps we can find another way.”
It took her a few moments to compose an answer. It’s a powerful object, she said at last. I can find some use for it, even if I can’t sing.
“It ain’t,” Esker said gently, “but in the hands of Ozier Amen-Enkh. My large friend. As he let me understand it, the staff ain’t any use until it’s shaped to fit with a man’s—some kind of field, he said, I forget the word. The staff, the man, and the rune all interact in very particular ways. Even someone else who knows the same rune can’t use it with the wrong staff.”
A sign of my good faith, then, said Mayet. I’ve just taken Ozier’s power away from him. The enemy of your enemy is your friend, is she not?
“Well, now that you know how a runeslinger’s staff works, you can try that angle if you like,” said Esker. “But—I don’t know the Tungsten Kid any better than I know you, but I don’t imagine he cares to feed friends who ain’t of immediate use. The vieja’s a barren place, and food’s dear in Souktown. I’m not sure how that’s going to get you what you want.”
How do you know what I want? Mayet said. It was all you could do to let me talk of making common cause before you and your green-eyed friend got to locking horns.
“I’ve thought on this long,” said Esker, “and I don’t hold you responsible for it up to now, of course; but I don’t believe I wish to hear any Epseris named my friend.”
In answer to your question, the girl said with some asperity, my father’s killer runs with the Tungsten Kid. His name is Taho Cheneres, and I aim to see him dead. He killed my father for a pittance to cover his gambling losses, then fled into Abedju to escape the authorities in Qarna. I haven’t anything against the Kid himself—not, you understand, that I hold with lawbreakers, but one must pick one’s battles.
“Mayet,” said Esker, “I’m powerfully sorry for your loss. My father yet lives, and for all I’m caught in this hell of a ruin I can’t imagine leaving it to find him dead—nor do I surmise I could rest knowing his murderer yet breathed. But it ain’t a way into common cause with us. I need Tungsten off my claim. Maybe I could see my way clear to killing his gang root and branch, but those three men who came after you and your companions had Epaphos Epseris on the run. Epaphos is a man whose deficits are legion, but if nothing else, he and his have the spine for fighting. I take his demurral seriously.”
YOU ARE READING
The Claim
FantasyA young soldier comes back from a campaign and finds himself prospecting a claim -- a small territory in a dead city where he has the right to search for ancient technology, or possibly magic. What is he looking for, and how did he come to possess t...
