The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [16]
She paused as if considering, and studied the woman some more, letting time pass. The sorceress was clearly suffering from some kind of contagious catarrh or grippe. Kehrsyn sucked in her lips and nodded, as if she was indeed deciding to go along with the woman's demands.
She waited until the sorceress cleared her throat again-Kehrsyn well knew how the grippe sapped people's willpower-and coughed to see how suggestible the woman might be.
Very, as it turned out.
No sooner had Kehrsyn cleared her throat than the woman stretched her neck and tried to clear hers. Kehrsyn put the pear to her mouth as if to take a bite and forced a sudden cough around the fruit. That brought a coughing fit upon the unhealthy woman as well. Kehrsyn watched for just a moment while the rasping cough gathered momentum, and just as the woman's eyes started to close with the force of her hacking, Kehrsyn made her move. Pear held in her teeth, Kehrsyn leaped forward, jumped up the wall with one boot clawing for just a bit of traction and stability, and neatly flicked her rapier at the woman's hand. The tip of her rapier caught her dagger just below the hilt and spun it out of the sorceress's helpless fingers. Deftly Kehrsyn caught the dagger by the handle as she landed on the uneven alleyway ground.
"You w-cough!" spluttered the woman, pointing with her newly emptied hand while the other futilely clawed at her collar.
Kehrsyn sheathed her rapier and took the pear from her teeth.
"The only protection I need," said Kehrsyn, "is for you to cover your mouth, so I don't catch my death."
She slung the blood from her dagger, sheathed it, and withdrew.
Kehrsyn hazarded one last glance over her shoulder before she turned a corner in the alleyway to leave the sight of the coughing woman. She caught a glimpse of the woman making mystical passes with her hand once more. Blue motes sparkled around her fingers, and something small and shiny zipped through the air to the woman's hand. Kehrsyn had just an instant to wonder what it might be.
The woman moved her hand to her mouth, and a high-pitched two-tone whistle filled the alley. Kehrsyn recognized it instantly: a constabulary whistle. One long, shrill blow was the signal for riot or assault upon a guard.
The response was immediate. Like feral dogs echoing the baying of the pack, other whistles began calling in the surrounding streets. Kehrsyn staggered, frozen by the abrupt flare of mortal fear, the return of the all-too-familiar feeling of being human prey.
The sorceress fixed Kehrsyn with a look of disgust as she slung the whistle back at the guard's corpse.
"Guess we'll see how good you really are now, won't we, hon?" she called out. Then, at the top of her lungs, she screamed and yelled, "Thief! She killed him!"
Kehrsyn turned and fled as the false witness broke into another fit of coughing. She ran down the twisting back alleys, dodging barrels of refuse and ducking under laundry lines, puffs of steamy breath peeling from the sides of her panicked face. When she'd been pursued as a child, she'd used her small size, fast feet, and knowledge of the terrain to evade pursuit, but she had none of these left to her. She was an adult, somewhat the weaker for chronic hunger, and had only been in Messemprar a few months. Worst of all, she was outnumbered far worse than she'd ever been as a kid. An entire city's worth of guards and deputized mercenaries had become her foes. Her only hope was that they couldn't identify her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Kehrsyn ran down the haphazard scattering of alleyways, trying to find a way out into the main city streets. The whistles petered out, but she knew they'd sound again if she were spotted. In the meantime, she was certain the sorceress had given the city watch a good description