Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [2]
His fingertips touched down and he rolled, somersaulting and catching himself in a low crouch as knives clattered to the ground around him.
The Fate Fall had been the game of choice among those petty children. He had not been allowed to play, but he had watched-and learned.
Those startled few drunks still in the common room stared wide eyed at his cloaked figure, surrounded by several lazily spinning blades on the stone floor. A quick glance beneath the rim of his well-worn hat told them it was time to leave, and the almost inhuman voices cursing from the balcony above punctuated the idea with sobering clarity.
Glancing over his shoulder, he watched the shadows on the ceiling as his foes gave chase. He stood and leaped toward the front door, shoving several stumbling drunkards ahead of him, making sure that all those capable of escape did so. The others, too long in their cups for the evening, snored in blissful ignorance. These he forgot as Vesk, leader of the assassins known as the Fallen Few, reached the balcony's railing, near the ancient altar that gave the Red Cup its name, and stared down with black eyes and readied daggers. His three companions joined him, their horrific appearances made more so in the guttering light of the torches below them.
Quinsareth turned back to face them, breathing calmly. The game had become both his meditation and his mantra-a game he'd never played with stones that he watched resolve in blood and steel.
The striking blue eyes of the pale one were on him. Sniffing the air and spitting, Blue-Eyes's wide mouth scowled as his raspy voice broke the silent stand-off.
"Sweetblood," Blue-Eyes muttered.
The game began by placing the small rectangular stones on end, one at a time, in neat little rows and twirling designs across the ground.
Quinsareth held his head low and walked backward as the assassins descended into the common room, drawing cruel weapons and moving into place. Vesk walked down the stairs behind Blue-Eyes, who in turn followed a hulking brute with scaly gray skin and a jaw and brow lined with little spines. Their fourth crawled along the opposite wall, hidden in a living cloak of shadows.
Each stone in the game each held a different meaning, inscribed in a symbol or rune.
Quinsareth could feel their hate, like an aura reaching for him with clawed fingers, eager to squeeze the life from this "sweetblood," a devil's term for the angel-touched, the aasimar. His feet found the small wooden bridge that separated the entrance from the common room and he continued, stopping about halfway across.
The game the children played was random, unknowing of the rules and nuances of the game.
He could see the brief look of confusion on Vesk's face and he pitied them, his celestial blood stirring at their nearness even across the stone floor of the broad inn. Obviously, they'd thought he would take flight into the darkness of the ruins outside. Vesk's right hand formed a swift and intricate gesture, a sign in the quiet language of rogues and thieves meaning "caution," and his companions halted and spread out, forming a semicircle around the bridge and their quarry.
But Quinsareth knew the game's secret sense, reading the tales and stories in their chaotic patterns.
Beneath his cloak, Quinsareth searched a small interior pocket and withdrew a small sphere, holding it before him in the palm of his right gauntlet. Its surface was glass, but within, it looked rotten, veins of ochre tracing through the dark mass. Vesk raised a knife, prepared to throw but watching for the slightest hint of magic from the sphere. The dark tattoos across his neck and shoulders squirmed and twisted in anticipation.