The Yellow Silk - Don Bassingthwaite [115]
Brin's knife stuck out of her skull, embedded up to its hilt just behind her left temple.
Laera stared at Veseene then up at him, and a horrible high whimper shivered out of the young woman's throat as she sank to the ground, Veseene's body clutched to her. Li was calling something from the rooftop of the Eel. Tycho couldn't really hear him. The blood in his ears was rushing too loud. His strilling fell from his hand and slid down to hang at his side. His bow clattered to the tabletop and splashed into the receding water below. He turned back around. Slowly.
Brin still stood on the broken roof of the shelter, one-eyed gaze glittering in the magelight. The halfling looked around at the destruction of the flood, at the bodies of pigs that hadn't managed to swim away, at the bodies of the men killed fighting. He smiled. Savagely. "You stupid dock rat!" he howled. "You want me? You want me? " He pounded a hand against his chest. "You can't take me! You killed Yu Mao-I killed Veseene. And that's just a start!"
He leaped down from the shelter into water that was now barely waist deep on him and splashed toward the table. His eye shone with madness. "You're going to wish-"
Music, magic, and rage twisted together inside Tycho's heart and he sang. Sound buffeted Brin and sent ripples across the water all around him. The halfling staggered, sloshing sideways. His gaze met Tycho's and he staggered on. "You're going to wish," he continued, "that you had never met me. That you had never met her" His head jerked at Veseene. "No one beats me!" He pounded his chest again. "I beat them. Just like I beat you. Like I beat the curse of Sow!" His hands slapped the surface of the water, splashing Tycho. "Not even the sea can take me! Not a pig around but I'm still alive. I outsmarted the-"
Tycho blasted him again. This time the surface of the water jumped and when Brin looked up, blood was oozing out of his nose. He stared at Tycho. "Is that the best you can do?" He surged forward through the water.
New songs come where you learn them. Veseene's words.
Tycho tipped his head back and drew a deep breath, focusing his mind, focusing his magic-focusing his song. He looked down at Brin and sang a new song. New to him at least. Veseene had been a teacher to the end.
A chill voice answered his song. It wasn't the deep voice that Veseene had commanded, but it didn't need to be. The water behind Brin frothed and surged. The halfling spun around, staring, as an elemental no larger than he was reared up out of the darkness, seized him with liquid limbs, and swept him down into cold seawater. Brin let out a squealing scream-a scream that ended in an explosion of bubbles. Tycho leaned out, watching Brin's struggles and singing until no more bubbles came up.
CHAPTER 16
Tycho? " The bard looked up as Li climbed down from the roof of the Eel. Li's back was torn and bloody. There were bruises across his face, and he limped as he waded across the water-logged sty. He wore his own coat again. Tycho couldn't imagine it would smell very good after being wrapped around Yu Mao's filthy body, but then he probably didn't smell very good himself.
Li's dao had landed blade-first in the mud. He wrenched it free in passing, washing off the muck by the simple expedient of swishing it through the last of the floodwater. His scabbard was floating under the table. Tycho swung down, grabbed it, and handed it to him. The Shou shook the water out of it and shoved the dao in. "That'll rust," Tycho pointed out.
"I'll clean it later. We should go." Li stared at Brin's pale, wet corpse.
Tycho nodded and turned back to the table.
Laera still knelt atop it, her arms wrapped around Veseene. Tycho took the body from her gently, propping Veseene upright as he closed her staring eyes and eased Brin's knife from her head. He looked away as it came free and hurled it as far from him as he could.
There was a ripping sound. When he looked back, Laera was binding a sleeve from her shirt around