The assassin faked another low charge. Iskondra kept her sword level but bent her knee, dropping her shielding hand down. The blue protective glow firmed up in anticipation of his attack. Tauri’s tail whipped around the stout wooden leg of a tavern chair.
He swung it around like the head of a flail, using it to lead his charge. The chair smashed into Iskondra’s sword arm from the side. She grunted and staggered sideways, trying to move with the momentum of the blow to get out of the path of the assassin’s deadly metal claws… with mixed results. His hands closed on her silk cape, but his razor-tipped fingers shredded the material instead of catching hold of it.
At the sound of tearing, Iskondra’s eyes went as wide as they might have if he’d gutted her instead. She turned and skidded to a stop, her ruined cape whipping out behind her. Her left hand and her body were shaking, but her right arm held her sword absolutely still.
“I asked if you knew why I hadn’t killed you yet,” she said, her voice a whisper of a hiss as she advanced on the assassin, who was wheeling around to face her after having overran the mark, his tail sweeping out around him like a thresher until he had his eyes on her. “I shall now proceed to enumerate the reasons for you.”
“Another list,” Tauri said. “Oh. Good.”
“First and foremost,” she said, raising her sword and crossing it towards her left shoulder, “is a fundamental respect for the sanctity of life,” she said, lunging forward and swinging the long blade in a shower of sparks. Tauri jumped back out of its descending path, but a wave of sparks cascaded forward, stinging and singing his cloak and fur. He raised his arms to protect his face. “I do not despise killing when it is necessary, but I disdain it when it is not.” She snapped a booted foot up to catch the momentarily blinded assassin with a sharp kick to the stomach. He doubled over, and she bashed him over the head with the pommel of her sword. He dropped to his knees. “The second is more practical. I suspected you were after me the first time I clapped my eyes upon you. You’ve made no attempt to conceal yourself or disguise your identity since then, and I doubt very much you have the facility for it. Quite frankly, it would be easier to keep avoiding you while you are alive than it would be to spot the next, doubtlessly more expensive operative or operatives that the House of Hulgar would send after me.”
She kicked the stunned man in the side of the head, sending him spinning onto his back, then planted her foot on his neck, pointing her sword right between his eyes. A glowing blue ball of sparks formed just beyond the tip, so close to him that Tauri’s eyes crossed trying to look at it.
“Kill quick,” Tauri said. “Preferably before third point.”
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