Page 35 of Winter's Edge
How dare he even say his name. "How do you know him?" I gritted out.
"We're both businessmen who happen to be in the same line of business."
The business he'd stolen. "When did you meet him?"
"Well,"—a whistley chuckle—"I only ever met him the one time."
"The one time you shot him, you mean."
A low rumble circled us, and I realized we’d drawn a crowd. Alcohol-laced breath floated on the air.
"That’s quite an accusation,” he said, his voice like a warning. “I'm not so sure I would go around spreading such filthy lies if I were you."
What little control I had fled as anger stampeded all my senses. Within seconds, I had an arrow nocked and aimed. "Don't you ever threaten me again or I swear—"
"You swear what? That you'll kill me?" His laugh rose up louder than the rest of the men who surrounded us. He stepped to the right like he was circling his prey. Making a show of mocking me. "A blind girl?"
"I'm blind, not stupid," I snapped, homing in on his every sound, every movement, every backtrack he made to try and trick me. "I know exactly where to shoot to bring you down and make you suffer. And I very rarely miss."
Our growing audience hooted and jeered.
"Give me the money that should've gone to my baba," I shouted.
"Sure. Okay. But only if you can answer me this." He seemed to do a little dance in the snow for his admirers from the sound of his frenzied steps, and they yelled appreciatively. "How many fingers am I holding up?"
Yeah. We were done here. He wasn't going to give me shit unless I gave him a very sharp reason to. I let an arrow fly. I heard it split through the air, the crowd's sudden intake of air. And then a satisfying howl of pain.
"How many fingers are you holding up now?" My fury ripped up my throat as I nocked another arrow.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he screamed.
A click sounded, just barely over the tumultuous pounding of blood through my veins. The onlookers' jeering turned to angry shouts as they pressed in. A horrendous crash of thunder ripped through the air.
Then suffocating silence, thick as a blanket of snow. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why. Why the thunder? Why the silence?
It wasn't until pain, fierce and hot, registered in my shoulder that I realized my mistake. One of my many, many mistakes. That hadn't been thunder. It had been a gunshot.
At once, two thoughts crashed against my temples.
I'd been shot.
Andrun.
Chapter 11
Ibolted to the right, toward the tavern I'd just left, swinging my walking stick in front of me like a bat. Another shot went off behind me, and a hailstorm of splintered wood sliced at my cheek as part of the exterior wall exploded. The bald man, or whoever was shooting at me, was aiming toward my head, and he might not miss the next shot.
The bullet hole in my shoulder chewed pain down my entire arm. Blood soaked down my side. My legs threatened to curl me to the ground.
I ducked through the door next to the windowed entry and spun to bolt it behind me just as someone flung themselves at it from the outside. The floor shook from the force. I'd pissed quite a few folks off today, doubly so since I was a girl and not acting like one. I had a feeling every single man outside the door would not be stopped by a simple locked door, and I wasn't too stupid to think it was the only one into the tavern.
They would come for me. All of them. I was a stranger, a smart-ass girl, and I'd hurt one of their own.
I had to get out, find a way back to Slipjoint Forest. Back to Archer. Shit. What if something had happened to him? What if he wasn't even there? I would be wandering the forest by myself in the middle of the night while bleeding out from a bullet wound.
But hell if I'd stay here.
I moved through the side halls in the tavern the same way I'd gone before, remembering the way by touch and sound and memory. There had to be a door—
