Azure bonds - Kate Novak [39]
Dragonbait turned to look at her in confusion. When Akabar laid a hand on her left arm to offer his assistance, she shoved both man and beast away with unbelievable strength, propelling herself in the opposite direction. With murder in her eyes, Alias leaped onto Giogi.
She landed on top of him with a scream, her hands about his throat in an instant. She might have wrung his neck, but she caught sight of a long, sharp knife used to cut pies and cake. She reached for it, but lost her grip on the young man as she did so. Giogi managed to twist away from her, and she plunged the pastry blade into the table where he'd been pinned only a moment before.
"I say, I wasn't that bad," the green-and-gold-clad noble sputtered, "I didn't want to do it, really. It's just that Minda kept begging me, you know?"
Alias yanked the blade from the tabletop and drew a fresh bead on her target. Giogi backpedaled furiously. Women screamed and several Wyvernspur menfolk, seeing their kin beseiged, shouted a battle cry and moved in on the attacker. Alias kept them all at bay with the knife. One cocky fellow got too close and received a slash across his cheek to show for it.
Several of the groom's relatives, faced with a mad assassin, fled the area as quickly as possible, leaving the tent sides flapping where they'd torn up the stakes.
Olive, her ode interrupted, her audience gone, moved toward the fight. She helped Akabar up from the ground as she demanded, "Just what does she think she's doing?"
"I think the sigils," Akabar explained in a whisper, "are trying to make her kill that man because he sounds like the king of Cormyr."
Olive glanced over at Giogi, who was now crawling along the ground. "But he doesn't look anything like Azoun."
"The sigils don't know that," Akabar pointed out, wracking his brain for some way to put the warrior woman out of commission without injuring her too severely.
A northerner of huge girth tried tackling her from behind. Alias pivoted, jammed an elbow into the man's belly, and backhanded him in the face with the handle of the knife. Bleeding from the nose, the man fell into the crowd.
Having lost her target, Alias's eyes swept through the tent. She spotted Giogi cowering beneath the punch table. She dove for him just as he managed to scramble to the other side.
Dimswart, realizing that it would not look good if one of his clients murdered one of his new in-laws, grabbed Akabar's shoulder. "Do something," he demanded.
Akabar nodded his head, but he hadn't prepared any magical spells that would be useful at a wedding celebration-turned-brawl.
Olive seized control of the situation by grabbing Dragonbait. "We have to stop her!"
The lizard cocked his head in confusion.
In a flash of inspiration Akabar cried, "Stop her, before she gets hurt!"
Dragonbait nodded. Dodging the confused, fleeing guests, he tackled the central pole of the tent. The huge beam slid across the grass, pulling the walls up and the roof down. Stakes ripped from the ground, and the pole toppled over with a thud, bringing acres of tent down and putting an end to the pandemonium with a great whoosh.
8
The Sigils
Akabar was one of the first to emerge from under the cloth, his red and white silk robes only slightly stained with grass. He immediately scanned the area for Alias's figure, but his view of the grounds was blocked by the growing throng of refugees. He waited by the edge of the collapsed structure, assisting others to their feet and hoping the swordswoman would appear.
When Giogi emerged from beneath the tent, he kept crawling until he bumped into the knees of a dowager Wyvernspur.
"Giogioni, you are a fool," the lady declared. "This civil unrest is a direct consequence of your open disrespect for our sovereign. I've warned you time and again that you were courting disaster."
"Yes, Aunt Dorath."