Parneres turned to the angry scorpia. "This isn't what you—"
She slapped him across the mouth. "I warned you against talking to women, Parneres. I won't tolerate a wife interfering in my affairs."
I yelled in outrage, despite being paralyzed by my discovery, when red trickled to his chin. How could she treat someone so precious with such cruelty? Even reeling in outrage, my mind pieced together her words with the similarities in appearance between the woman and the man in front of me and their identical accents. It was more than both of them having a Far Southern look. They had the same slender limbs, the same shape to their noses and mouths, even to their ears.
Gala's mourning eyes! Parneres wasn't her lover. It was so much worse. The scorpia assassin was his close female relative. Perhaps even the closest one, like a sister. She could be the woman who I would have to plead with to give him away. There wasn't much chance of her agreeing to the match now!
"Be reasonable, I beg you. I caught the young woman stealing and wanted to settle things quietly." Parneres spoke in a cajoling tone, ignoring his split lip. "Just look at her, she's barely out of girlhood and not a woman of means. She can't afford a husband."
Alas, if he meant to relieve the tension, it had the opposite effect. The scorpia flicked her eyes at me. The expression she saw on my face—the expression beyond my control—confirmed everything she had already believed about my intentions for Pareneres. Too late had I snapped my gasping mouth shut and fought to look demure.
She slapped him again, even harder. "Stop lying."
He staggered into a thin temporary wall, nearly crushing it, hands raised in a pacifying gesture.
His plea put an amused smile on her face. It grew wider after she afforded me another look.
"My, my, Parneres! You are scraping the bottom of the barrel."
Offended or not by their dismissal of me as a woman, I was done standing by while she harassed the poor man.
I spat at her. "Maybe you have rights to Parneres, but striking a man is the lowest of the low things a woman can do!"
She pushed him further out of her way.
He slumped to the floor, his long legs across the tiny space, bent at the knees, so she had to step over them.
I should have used the minute he had bought me, but was too caught up in confusion.
Unlike the slaps, he pushed him in a familiar, almost gentle way. Was I mistaken about her being his sister? The touch was so intimate, so charged with the promise of future passion! And to think of it, the slaps also might have been a part of lovers' rituals. I heard of women who had such erotic tastes.
As I stood there losing precious moments, Parneres jerked his head, his brows, his eyes at me, in place of yelling a warning. Run, his pained expression said. For the love of the Divines and Nirvana, run!
His mute appeal wasn't what convinced me. I wanted to defend him.
It was the way the scorpia moved. Each step was a glide of an asp. It reminded me that, yes, we both were women, but she was a dreaded assassin, while I had attacked sacks of straw with an ax for my weapon training. If she killed me, I would never deliver Parneres from his bondage. Sometimes, a retreat is a strategic necessity.
I turned and ran.
Another shuriken whistled by, threatening to take off my ear. It wasn't a killing weapon for the scorpia. She was simply herding me away from the theater to some quiet lane where she could close in for the kill. Maybe even take her time killing me.
The instinct to hide and lie low would spell my death, because she would find me. So, I crushed that instinct into dust.
Zigzagging between the boxes of theatrical wherewithal like a monkey who had sat on a hot pan, I burst into the market.
I kicked the closest trestle table, spilling the fruit. Oranges and lemons went flying. Too bad the melons weren't in season. I'd have loved to hear the melons cracking open in my wake.
Instead, the orange and yellow fruit bounded in all directions, jolly, bright, crazy. Kids popped out of their hiding holes as if by magic. They chased after the windfall, weaving between the feet of the adults, avoiding the angry hands, stuffing the chests of their shirts, screaming in delight. At least someone in Palmyr wasn't cursing me out!
My passing caused more cussing than joy though.
A merchant with a juice-stained apron came at me. Her face contorted with an outraged yell.
I yelled twice as loud and plunged head-long down the length of the fruit row.
A vendor of teas and herbs set to intercept me, fat belly forward, arms flung to the sides. I heard her swatting once I had dogged around her. What did she think I was, a black fly?
The carts and stands got in my way, stayed to the side, I overturned and upset everything within my reach so long as it didn't slow me down.
Alas, the fruit row ended, with no more juicy mounds to spill. The scorpia couldn't throw her barbed shuriken in the marketplace, but her glance speared me from the tunnel of covered stalls as I sprinted past its opening. She closed in on me more than I had thought possible in the mayhem.
I ran on, hitting scarves and sarees at the clothier's row. Good enough! I yanked the flapping fabrics from the poles, strewing lengths of silks and printed cottons for the donkeys to trod on.
Donkey, whoah!
I folded to my knees, bent all the way back at the waist, sweeping the soiled paving stones with my hair. Good thing they were soiled with rotten produce, wastewater and the beasts' urine—it made it slippery. The momentum carried me under the belly of the stinky beast. The loud braying joined the hue and cry of the market.
By Indara, where was the Watch? I had an assassin on my heels, half the market was upside-down and they were taking a break in the shade somewhere?
The silversmiths' row came into view. Oh, rats! Here I would be pitched against armed guards with far better aim than the fruit-sellers.
With everything I had left in my burning legs, I sailed past the silversmiths and ran onto the Golden Canal's embankment, gripped its smooth stone by some miracle and gained its top. It was barely wide enough to stand on. I balanced precariously, arms outstretched.
Behind my back murky water splashed. I knew its content intimately. I wanted to curl into a ball, clenching the right side of my belly, the one that felt like I had a litter of kittens trying to get out.
But I straightened as much as I could without toppling over. Save for wheezing like bellows, I said nothing.
One heartbeat.
Two.
The crowd below me was dappled with gaping eyes and mouths.
The Watch's helmets flashed with the scarlet of the westering sun finally popped into view. They were converging on me.
A rotten orange exploded a hand span below my feet, spraying me with its rotten flesh and juice.
Another heartbeat.
There!
The eyes like Pareneres' burrowed into me, full of hatred. The scorpia assassin was twenty or so paces away, gliding three paces in one stride, her magic outfit helping her blend with whoever happened to be next to her. Her right hand was curled inside her sleeve, caressing a weapon. Probably, she didn't mind flinging it at me in public now. After all, a crowd could conceal a killer as surely as a deserted back lane. Why didn't I think of that?
I flapped my arms like wings, lifted my eyes dramatically to the sky and toppled backwards into the canal.
A sharp leaf of a dagger whistled an inch above my belly, before hitting the opposite side of the canal's embankment with a metal ding. If I stayed on my perch another moment it would have cut my neck.
The collective hush fell upon the good citizens of Palmyr.
Out of their sight, I arched my back and pointed my toes as much as I could. Stretched the arms above my head, praying. My fingertips cut through the water. Falling from this height, it was as hard as stone.
The silence of the crowd changed to a wail of horror, but it came to me muffled by the water closing above my head.
I dove deeper and deeper, turning round under water. Oh how I wished that I had strength to swim upstream, against the current!