Realms of Infamy - James Lowder [34]
Everybody except one.
The new tough, a young man probably three or four years older than Artemis, had arrived earlier in the tenday. He did not ask permission of Artemis before he began rolling the wretches in the mud, or even walking into homes in broad daylight and terrorizing whoever was inside. The stranger forced Artemis's subjects into making him a meal, or into offering him whatever other niceties could be found.
That was the part that angered Artemis more than anything. Artemis held no love, no respect, for the common folk of his carved-out kingdom, but he had seen the newcomer's type before-in both his horrid past and in his troubled nightmares. In truth, there was room on Artemis's street for two thugs. In the five days that the new tough had been about, he and Artemis hadn't even seen each other. And certainly none of Artemis's wretched informants had asked for protection against this new terror. None of them would dare even to speak with Artemis unless he asked them a direct question.
But there remained the not-inconsiderable matter of pride.
Artemis peered around the shack's corner, down the muddy lane. "Right on schedule," he whispered as the newcomer strolled onto the other end of this relatively straight section of road. "Predictable." Artemis curled his lip up, thinking that predictability was indeed a weakness. He would have to remember that.
The new thug's eyes were dark, his hair, like Entreri's, black as the waters of the Kandad Oasis, so black that every other color seemed to be mixed together in its depths. A native-born Calimshite, Artemis decided, probably a man not unlike himself.
What tortured past had put the invader on his street? he mused. There is no room for that kind of empathy, Artemis scolded himself. Compassion gets you killed.
With a deep, steadying breath, Artemis steeled his gaze once more and watched coldly as the invader threw a staggering old man to the ground and tore open the wretch's threadbare purse. Apparently unsatisfied with the meager take, the young man yanked a half-rotted board from the uneven edge of the nearest shack and whacked his pitiful victim across the forehead. The old man whined and pleaded, but the tough struck him again, flattening his nose. He was on his knees, face covered in bright blood, begging and crying, but got hit again and again until his sobs were muffled by the mud that half-buried his broken face.
Artemis found that he cared nothing for the old wretch. He did care, though, that the man had begged this newcomer, had pleaded with a master who had come uninvited to Artemis Entreri's place.
Entreri's hands went down to his pockets, slipped inside, feeling the only weapons he bothered to carry, two small handfuls of sand and a flat, edged rock. He gave a sigh that reflected both resignation and the tingling excitement of impending battle. He started out from the corner, but paused to consider his own feelings. He was the hunting cat, the master here, so he was rightfully defending his carved-out domain. But there remained a sadness Artemis could not deny, a resignation he could not understand.
Somewhere deep inside him, in a pocket sealed away by the horrors he had known, Artemis knew things should not be like this. Yet the realization did not turn him away from the battle-to-come. Instead, it made him even angrier.
A feral growl escaped Artemis's lips as he stepped around the shack, out into the open and right in the path of the approaching thug.
The older boy stopped, likewise regarding his adversary. He knew of Artemis, of course, the same way Artemis knew of him.
"At last you show yourself openly," the newcomer said confidently. He was bigger than slender Artemis, though there was very little extra weight on his warrior's frame. His shoulders had been broadened by