As A God Read online

  …if she still fought as a Child.

  Ten Measures as the Rat’s precious favorite, the Princess of Home. Two Measures in Runner training, the full four Turns of the Run, nearly three Measures on her own in worlds she did not understand or control. Sequa had become so much more than a Child of Home. Her life ripped apart at the seams when she became a Runner, and when she put herself back together the cloth could not be the same. If she had ever been a simple Child, it had been during her actual childhood.

  A Child would have fallen back, retreated from the edge of the blade a step, two, and then come in against his off hand. If he didn’t have a holdout palmed against that wrist, Sequa would give him her armor.

  She stepped into the blow, inside the range of the strike, negating the blade. Knees bending, torso dropping, putting the center of her body on the inside line. Her forearm met his just below the wrist, a gentle deflection that pushed the blade farther off line. Then her fingers curled down, snapping closed on his wrist, forcing his arm to hold full extension and his body to follow it, jerking slightly downward.

  His chin met her upswept right elbow and barely paused it, the blow thrown with the uncoiling power of knees and hips and forward motion. Children didn’t do that. They didn’t close unless they had more weapon then the opponent. Children stayed out and tried to “defang the snake” by removing the primary weapon from play, or they ran. Runners didn’t do it either, since they usually did have more weapons than their opponents, and why risk close combat?

  No longer one and never quite the other.

  Coming in now, on a man bigger and stronger with unknown weapons constituted insanity. Everyone would remember this. She would never catch this man—or the others in the room—with this move again.

  She only needed once.

  He went down flat on his back, still clutching the wooden knife, eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.

  Sequa pried the hilt-less dagger out of his other hand. A pretty little piece of bloodletting, the grip roughened with use and the blade gleaming steel.

  “Charming,” she said and tapped it against his throat. “Also, dead.”

  Looking around the circle, Sequa noted who suppressed a smile, who stood appalled, who showed anger.

  “I think the tradition now is next?”

  She fought fifteen more that session before they gave up trying to break her. Though none of the matches had lasted more than thirty strikes she went limp and ragged with exhaustion when they called an ending. Sixteen was considered the limit—four fours, a fortunate number to a heretic; encouraging to know that they had to set such strictures. Good, disciplined warriors and she felt grateful to train with them.

  Anem deserved no less, Sequa thought as she vomited into the slop bucket in the corner of the room. Not that there had been much to give back but water. She really did need to eat more.

  Despite her brave words to Anem, her shoulder ached and a little blood thickened against her under shirt from her shoulder wound. Yet the Goddess had not danced all the way to her Fullness since she had been stabbed. It did seem a precipitous healing.

  The room had mostly cleared out by then. She had been mildly shocked when more than one of her erstwhile opponents had expressed either sympathy or rough comradeship as she knelt, sick from the exertion. Her arrogant display had apparently won her some good will.

  Nearly worth the heaving not to be hated.

  The grey man lurked nearby when she glanced up. She measured her exhaustion nearly as great as his skills since she had not known he stood there. The room now echoed empty and grew dark; most of the cold lights had been removed by departing fighters.

  In the lengthening shadows they both seemed at ease. Uncovered, he had a round plain face with plump cheeks at great odds with the rest of his leanness. His eyes were a watery blue and his hair dark brown, cropped very close to his skull.

  “You’re not…” He started and stopped twice more before coming to a beginning he liked. “I saw you fight in the capitol. Eight Measures ago. You did not fight like that today.”

  His voice sounded hazy with fatigue and head injury. She could hear his backcountry accent now. He would have grown up in the farm country near her old home. Younger son, no prospects of anything but endless toil in the dirt, maybe not even marriage if there were too many other siblings. Smaller than his brothers, bullied and abused. Whether he ran to the city or had been abandoned there would be a coin toss. Enough skill and courage and dumb luck to keep him alive until the Rat and his Children had found him.

  Then other skills learned in shadow; blood falling to the earth instead of grain.

  She wondered what had driven him away from Home. Had he been ordered to kill an innocent merchant? Lost a fight over bed partner? Offended one of the Rat’s titled favorites? She herself did not remember him—and she would know him by how he fought if not by his face—so it could not have been a great scandal or loss. Just a space one day in their ranks, filled from the most ruthless of the street urchins Under Roof within the turn of a glass.

  She still knelt, one hand resting idly on the bucket she’d been using, ready to throw it if he came at her in violence. She had unconsciously turned her ruined face against the wall, exposing the smooth pale skin of her strong side. Now she rose and showed him her beauty.

  He flinched swiftly and his face contained more sympathy than she was used to. He knew how much such an injury would have hurt.

  “I have had to adapt.” Sequa kept her voice very soft, since her throat hurt from vomiting.

  He tilted his head quizzically, a gesture he seemed not to notice, likely posturing. That almost made her smile.

  “Neither am I. I’m glad of it.”

  “You still fight like a Child, sir.”

  “That part has not changed as much as I’d like.”

  Sequa opened her left hand once in gentle agreement.

  He shifted his weight sharply, and her heart surged. Angles and possibilities blossomed in her mind, where would the first blow come from, how could she counter it? He would have weapons against her barehanded and bareheaded, weak and already hurting from over exertion.

  She would have to kill him in the first few heartbeats or die.

  “Run the Road with us tonight,” he said abruptly.

  “Run? After this?” He shocked honesty out of her in an explosion of breath, and the knowledge of his minor victory flashed across his face.

  Her hand went up to silence him before he could speak. “Yes. Name the time.”

  Any other answer would have closed this cracked door in her face. If she showed weakness or hesitancy—if she even acknowledged the near-certainty that someone would make another attempt on her life out on the Child’s Road—any allies she might have gained here would transmute into deadly foes with the next breath. Even killing him now would not solve the problem; the others would know why he died.

  “When the Mother is highest, find us. The Commander likes us to keep up our skills.” Then he turned and left the room with a smooth, sharp spin on one heel.

  She’d seen him do that before—at the end of a long corridor as she walked with a knife in her throat.

  Sequa stared blankly into the shadows. She was comprehensively exhausted, battered and so thirsty she could drink the river dry. The Goddess would be at Her height in a few turns of the glass. If she moved swiftly she could have a plain meal and a little sleep before she would have to mix once more with the men and women of the Iron Quarters in deadly earnest; at least one had now made two separate attempts to kill her. They would test her, out there on the rooftops under the eye of the Goddess. Test her to destruction if they could.

  In the now near-total darkness of the room, Sequa laughed.

  She would finish the night on her feet. It would be instructive to see how many of Anem’s erstwhile Children did the same.

  ~ * ~

  As the Mother of All reared up against the bright sparkling Feathers, six hooded figures gathered on a t
iled peak near the center of Under Roof. The old building had been built before the covering over of most the city; the wood engulfed all but this tip as though it sank with a last breath to drown in darkness and poverty. No access to the open air from under the tile, so the roof space remained empty. Unobstructed views graced every direction for several blocks.

  “She ain’t coming, pets,” said one of them, a man almost half a head taller than the rest of them with a rough peasant’s voice. “You owe me a night shift.”

  With an irritated feminine snort, the person he addressed turned her head in a slow sweep across the horizon and back again without pausing.

  All still and silent nothing but the occasional flap of some night bird in the air above, the shifts and pops of wood settling. Sometimes muffled noises penetrated the roof—what would have been screams or cheers down below became little more than gentle moans, as thought the roof itself protested their presence.

  The grey man, moving a little more stiffly than his comrades, sighed and turned around to face into the circle.

  Seven figures there now.

  “Merciful Mother!”

  He jumped back, sliding several paces on the tiles, causing a panicked scramble within the group. One man fell heavily, the cracking sound of his knees striking the ceramic visceral, ominous; the exact sound of a bone breaking.

  Sequa balanced on the crest of the roof and bowed politely. She wore dark veils and clothes in the man’s style and had two sticks strapped openly to her back.

  Snarls sounded from several of the former Children at such overt mockery.

  One sweep of her head took them all in. “Oh, still your posturing. I am here to Run. Now.”

  The gray man despite his fatigue and still-trembling shock at her appearance turned on her words and loped off north, where the heights of the buildings changed most precipitously.

  Sequa moved to flank him, going wide to his left. She had always anchored the left side of any group taking the Children’s Road, her sword side. The rest of them shook themselves out and came on slightly behind the two front runners. The gait of the man who had fallen was visibly hampered.

  Even shaky with fatigue, Sequa found her own stride firm and sure in her wonderful, miraculous new shoes. She had collected them after picking up her new weapons. Pecaran had drawn them out from under his workbench with a flourish and insisted she try them on immediately; he must have worked day and night. By the time she had finished lacing them tightly to her calves, an almost sensual experience, he was already fussing about the fit and mused aloud about changes he wanted to make.

  She’d paid him for the pair she wore and another with the modifications he wanted as soon as she rose to her feet. If she could, she would have commissioned a thousand pairs; it had been worth the lack of rest to have such tools for her trade.

  Suddenly, she realized she felt happy for the first moment she could remember in Measures. To be running the roof of a city again in such company, with no greater purpose than just to run, was a forgotten joy. She remembered why she had loved this life so much. The air tasted clean and crisp, even under her veils, and she suppressed something that might have been a laugh.

  The first obstacle presented itself abruptly: a sharp drop of a story to another rooftop in a new part of the city. Sequa pushed off and spun in midair, an unnecessary flourish.

  When she alighted, one hand and opposite knee touching down on the fitted stones of the new roof, the other runners tried to kill her for the first time.

  The man who had fallen, using his injury as an opportunity, made it seem he missed his jump, shorted his flight. He came off the lip of the roof directly above her and aimed both his feet and not inconsiderable weight directly for her back. Sequa felt, saw, heard motion, the air around her swirling wrongly and simply threw herself down and to the side, veils into the dirt and bird-shit covered rock. The man landed hard enough to hear.

  Reacting still, no malice in the action, Sequa levered herself up onto her hands and spun in place to scythe his legs out from under him. Something popped horribly in his knee with her strike and he actually yelled aloud. Two of the others who had landed near by turned and came back toward him.

  Weaklings. They had forgotten the oldest rule of Home. If you fall, you’re on your own.

  Sequa shoulder rolled, smearing the back of her clothes with more filth, and surged to her feet to regain her place.

  Her heart still sang with joy; the murderous intentions of her companions only enflamed the happiness.

  On she ran, vaulting barriers, climbing walls and drainpipes, dodging slower and less nimble bodies. Flying.

  Alive.

  She thought the first attempt had been ad hoc and unplanned when she became aware of their second try. They herded her with great subtlety, aiming for a tall building, one story lower, with several thick brick stacks sticking up from the perimeter as decorations and smoke funnels. The construction left narrow slits of access to the roof along its entire length, as though they were columns guarding the front of a temple, each more than a body-length deep. The brickwork then sloped downward at a sharp angle to shed rainwater from the roof down into the narrow alley.

  Between two of them, a sliver of light gleamed, at chest height.

  The laughter bubbled onto her lips with the next spume of bloody saliva. Clever, clever. A cutthroat or a sudden jar to a heart-stopping fall down the side of the building.

  Altering her course, she sped up, sprinting straight for the shine of death. Breathless anticipation lit the air around her.

  The roof she was on ended in a short wall, barely knee height. The others deliberately clogged up the only other access points.

  Sequa threw herself into a tumbling run at the last second, hands slapping onto the gritty stone, feet over her head, back upright and spinning toward her destruction in one long, breathtaking flurry of motion and power. She flung herself feet first toward the trap.

  As she passed the edge of the building, she drew one of her new sticks from her back harness and spun it to catch at either side of the narrow space intended to be her death.

  The supple reed bent but did not break, bowing inward. She kicked her legs up, the tip of one boot twanging across the wire at the full stretch of her spine. Sequa’s momentum sent her spinning around until her feet pointed at the sky. For a heartbeat, she hung there, one hand tucked against her chest and the other pointed straight downward. She looked back at the roof she’d jumped from, at the line of former Children arrested in poses of shock.

  As the forward motion that had held her stick against the wall failed, Sequa waved at them all with her free hand and slide downward into the darkness of the unlit alley, toward the ground six stories below.

  She waited for them two blocks over, sitting on a wicker lounger on the roof of some rich Merchant-born’s house.

  Only four of them left, one had peeled off to take the injured man home. Their body language was less opaque than it should have been, she could read surprise and shame on several of them. But from the grey man, when he stepped forward, she sensed nothing. The others moved in but stopped perhaps an arm’s length from him, moving out to flank him.

  Sequa held her weapons openly, but did not rise as he came near. He checked, visibly swallowed the insult, and continued to stand over her.

  “Four times you’ve tried to kill me,” she remarked. “Should have slit your throat after the second.”

  “You’ve grown lazy, Princess.” The words were calm, deliberate. Measured.

  Suicidal, and he knew it.

  The blood that rushed to her eyes made the silver light of the Goddess grow misty. Every fiber of her muscles, every instinct acquired or born, every ounce of training cried out to hear the sound of his neck breaking under her hands.

  From her prone position, Sequa swung her feet around to plant them on the ground. In every hand, a weapon of some sort appeared.

  She laughed at them, tasting her own blood on her lips like a fine w
ine, sour with her need to kill him, kill them all.

  And still laughing she rolled backward to the far side of the couch and kicked it into the shins of the grey man. He did not go down but his upper body jerked forward in response and met the tip of her left stick. It touched his forehead light as a feather from the sky.

  The woman on his left felt polished wood caress the wrist of the hand holding her short sword like the touch of a lover. The small man next to her felt wood on the back of his neck and spine. The last in line, another woman, was tapped twice on the knees. None of them had done more than straighten or step forward.

  Each crippling, killing blow pulled until it became a message, a warning, and a demonstration of skill.

  Sequa ended in front of the grey man again, breathing hard enough that it shook her whole body. “Do not call me that again.”

  He stared at her, still bent over like an old man, then reached up and pulled his veils off. His knife gone, hands empty. “I am Krif.” Then he dropped his head far enough that she could see the back of his neck. My life is yours, since you have already taken it. The submission the Children of Home offered to the Master.

  When Sequa looked at the others, they were bareheaded and half-bowed as well.

  Where they could not see it, she swiped at her eyes with one sleeve, brushing sweat and other salty liquid clear.

  “No.” Her voice grew sharp with the effort of controlling the death in her heart. “You are Anem’s. I hold no oaths. I do not lead.”

  The sound of fabric snapping brought the grey man’s head back up.

  The rooftop in front of him was empty.

  ~ * ~

  The next day, still sore from the sparring and the Running, Sequa once more butted her head against the newfound limits of her fame. Under Roof, where she most needed to be, she could barely walk in full veils without being noticed. She spent half a day fruitlessly wandering the street, catching glares and listening to the mutters, cataloguing what and how they saw her.

  Her height. Well, very little she could do there. High heels were lethally impractical, and she had never had the knack for moving like a child. Some of the smaller girl-Children could pretend to be urchins and orphans; she could not feign the lack of coordination, the awkward uncertainty.