Free Night of Knives by Ian C. Esslemont

Gods! It sounded as if the blasted beast was right at her shoulder!
    Who kept animals like that? Kiska decided that before dawn she’d knife that dog if someone else didn’t get to it first. Cautious, she lowered herself down into the enclosed yard.
    The old man was thrust twice through the back. She wondered if this piece of work was by order of her target. Had he offered the old man a proposition? One that could not be turned down? Perhaps he was unaware of the murder. The Claws, or someone else, might think this meeting should never have occurred. She nudged the body over and began rifling through its clothes.
    She slipped her hand inside the tunic, still warm with blood. The man snatched her wrist and his eyes snapped open. Automatically, she yanked out her gauche and shoved it into the man’s chest, leaning her full weight onto the blow. It was a mortal thrust, she was certain of it, but still he stared and held his grip. A death rictus? Horribly, he smiled and opened his mouth. A stream of blood welled out, blackening his chin. Steady, unnatural pressure pulled her close. The bloodied lips turned down reprovingly.
    ‘But I
am
dead, you see,’ he whispered wetly, ‘and the Shadow Moon is risen.’
    Facing a horror she’d been warned of but never actually believed, Kiska’s training – sketchy, only informal – crumbled and she screamed.
     
    Temper was wrestling with the corroded lock on his door when someone murmured his name from down the hall. He jerked up from examining the stubborn lockplate. Corinn waved from behind a door barely opened. He straightened, would have shouted hello, but something in her tight expression silenced him. She waved again, impatient, and he ambled down the hall. At the door he grinned, tried to look in past her. It was the room Anji and a few other girls used for their whoring. He arched one brow. ‘Well, I thought you’d never—’
    ‘Just get in here, damn you,’ she hissed, pulling open the door and yanking him in.
    Despite the woman’s obvious anger, Temper felt himself grinning idiotically. They stood close in the cramped closet of a room. Her tongue, sharp as a Darujhistan rapier, cut everyone who dared come close. But here, nearly touching her, Temper was suddenly very aware of the depths of her deep brown eyes, and the filigree detail in the black tattooing that ran from the tip of her nose to her forehead.
    He sometimes fancied catching interest in those eyes, sidelong, hidden, but tonight concern tightened them. He’d daydreamed of just such an encounter, usually when drink softened his judgement or loneliness emptied his chest and he desired someone to talk to. But now he felt awkward and self-conscious while she looked straight at him and shook her head.
    ‘You just had to show up tonight, didn’t you.’
    For an instant, Temper felt like a wayward husband finally dragging himself home after a three-day binge. He laughed, pointed back to his room. ‘Corinn – I live here. Where else am I supposed to go?’
    ‘The barracks! You’re supposed to have stayed. Why didn’t you just . . . Oh, never mind.’ She waved for silence. ‘Listen to me. We’ve only a minute. What I’m going to say and do, I’m doing to save your life. Understand?’
    Standing so close, he caught the dusky hint of her scent – perfume of some unknown flower? Foreign spices? Incense? She was half-Napan, someone had once said: half as dark. He blinked, swallowed. Here he was, an old warhorse long out to pasture, yet flaring its nostrils at a passing mare.
    ‘Saving my life? Corinn, I’m hitting the sack and a bottle of Kanese red. That is, unless you’ve something else in mind . . .’
    Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘You damned idiot. I’m trying to save your worthless hide.’ She raised a fist, opened it palm up. A small badge lay there on the pale lined flesh, metalpainted and enamelled in the sigil of a stone arch over a field of flames. The badge of the Bridgeburners, the