Carnival

She’d missed the opportunity to really see him move when he’d saved Claude Singapore’s life, and during the previous evening’s skirmish she’d been only peripherally aware of what he did, the phenomenal efficiency and speed with which he’d managed three armed women.

“Farther left,” he said, waving her aside. “Splinters.”

Another time, she might have taken him to task for his lack of deference, but she didn’t want to break his focus, so she edged two more steps away from the door frame and flattened herself against the wall, breathing steadily, ready to spring out and intercept the swinging panel on the rebound. She shielded her face with her hand, but couldn’t resist watching between her fingers as Kusanagi-Jones took one deep breath.

“If I go down,” she said, “run and keep running.”

He didn’t spare her a glance. “Try not to be the one that goes down.”

Without breaking the steady rhythm of his breathing, he took two fluid steps, spun, and kicked out, hard. The door shattered against the chain, and Lesa kicked off the wall and slung herself through it, catching the rebound on her flat hand. Flesh tore on splintered wood, but she didn’t hesitate.

As she cleared the doorway and broke into a bare, scuffed-dirt yard, the unwary guard lunged for her and missed. The unshod footsteps behind her were Kusanagi-Jones’s. She heard the grunt and thud as he slammed into the sentry and hoped Michelangelo had body-checked him hard enough to break bones.

Not hard enough to shut him up, unfortunately, because he was shouting before he’d picked himself up on his elbows. But Michelangelo was still with her, pulling up beside her, running hard as the camp boiled like a kicked nant’s nest.

Gunfire spattered around her, ended by a curse. Chemical accelerant had a distinctive sound. These were lethal loads, and they came close enough to sting her with kicked-up earth and splinters. Kusanagi-Jones grunted as he dropped back a step, falling in behind her, shielding her body with his own.

She wasn’t going to get him shot by running slow. Lesa dodged around the side of a low hut constructed of thatch and daub over a wooden frame and dove past two unarmed males, elbowing the nearer in the jaw as she went by. Judging by the collision, Kusanagi-Jones took the other one down without breaking stride.

“Go,” Kusanagi-Jones yelled as she slid around the second corner, between the shelter and the thorn wall. She could see green jungle through the gaps in the canes, and the wall was no more than a meter beyond the hut. His footsteps stopped, his breathing no longer close on her heels.

He was buying her time to get out, turning to make a stand.

Below the edge of the overhang, Lesa bent her knees and jumped. Not for the thorn wall—the long curved spines of wire plant rendered it as impossible to climb as a heap of razors—but for the roof. Her fingers slipped in rain-slimed thatch, and insects and shreds of vegetation showered her face and shoulders. The top layers were wet, but underneath the fronds were dry—old enough to need replacing—and her hands sank through to latch onto the beam underneath. Wood cracked under her weight, and for a moment she dangled, cursing. Then she got her motion under control, pumped her legs, and half swung, half scrambled up, arms trembling and chest aching with the strain.

This was not a roof built for walking on. She lay flat and turned to pull Kusanagi-Jones after her.

“Go,” he said, with a glance over his shoulder. He had a weapon in his hands that he must have liberated from the first, unwary guard, and he was bleeding, red dripping from the right sleeve of his gi and spreading over his fingers, more than his torn wrists could explain.

There was no time for thanks, for apologies.

She went.

She slithered across the hunchbacked roof on her belly, turning so she faced the thorn wall, and paused where rafters gave way to the unsupported fringe of thatch. The flat sharp cracks of three more gunshots echoed through the trees, the birds of morning shrieking and then silent. The bullets came nowhere near their position. Encouraging, because the hut wouldn’t offer Kusanagi-Jones anything except visual cover, but she hoped the partisans might think they were working their way toward the gate.

Kusanagi-Jones conserved his ammunition, making them find him and thendeal with his ability to shoot back. Smart boy. She’d seriously underestimated the Coalition males.

Lesa clenched her hands around that last flaking roof beam and drew her feet forward into a crouch. It was hard to judge distances in the gray morning light, but she could hear calls through the camp now. Another two or three random shots might serve to raise the alarm for any distant sentries. She stared at the thornbreak one last time, closed her eyes, and jumped for her life.