Read The Sunset Warrior - 01 for Free Online Page A

better than to disrupt the Sehna. You got a problem, go work it out at the Hall of Combat, not here. Get me?’
    Ronin nodded. ‘Sure.’
    The other one had not moved at all. He stood watching Ronin. His eyes looked opaque, as if they had been painted on. ‘Names,’ said the one who talked, and Ronin gave them while he wrote. Then he took down Ronin’s account of the argument.
    ‘What happened to your shoulder?’ asked the other one, and the first one looked up.
    ‘I was getting to that,’ he said with some annoyance.
    ‘Wanted to make sure, is all,’ said the other.
    ‘Well?’ The stylus was poised.
    ‘I must have cut it on the edge of a plate when I fell. Quite a lot of them broke.’
    ‘Yeh, so I see.’ He turned. ‘All right, nothing going on here,’ he called to the crowd, and they began to disperse. ‘Go on,’ he told the other one, and as he turned to leave, he said to Ronin: ‘Clean up this mess.’
    K’reen stood silently beside Ronin, her hand on his back. He looked at Nirren, who shook his head. ‘I can manage.’ He still had to support G’fand almost totally. ‘Look after yourself.’
    Ronin nodded. He turned and saw Tomand, face white and sweaty. Bessat was comforting him as if he were a small child. They came up to him and Tomand said, ‘I do not know what to—’ He eyed the blood. ‘But he had it coming to him.’
    ‘It was about time someone stopped that kind of talk,’ said Bessat. ‘We are grateful.’
    Ronin felt annoyed. ‘That is simply what it was. Talk. He meant none of it.’
    ‘He insulted me all right,’ whined Tomand. ‘But he feels differently about it now, I’ll warrant.’
    Very softly K’reen said: ‘I had better clean you up. Now.’
    Ronin looked at her. She had recognized the drift of the conversation.
    ‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘I suppose you had better.’
    ‘And no one saw you pick it up?’
    ‘I rather think not. They were all too busy.’
    ‘Yes. I can see that.’
    ‘How far did it go in?’
    ‘To the hilt.’
    He sat on the bed, with his shirt off, turning G’fand’s dagger over and over in his open palm, staring at the blade with its dark smear. K’reen bent over him, working on the wound. Occasionally she rummaged in an open bag beside her.
    They had gone at first to Stahlig’s, even though he knew it could have been awkward. But the surgery was dark and the cubicle behind it, and there was no telling where the Medicine Man had gone or when he would return. So they had come to K’reen’s quarters because of her bag.
    She began to stitch the wound closed, having already cleaned it thoroughly. ‘What is wrong with that boy? A weapon at Sehna! What was he thinking of?’
    He kept his body very still. ‘He is not a boy, firstly,’ he said. ‘And he takes his work seriously—perhaps too seriously. They do not exactly make it easy for the Scholars, and it affects him. Perhaps.’ He forgot and shrugged.
    ‘Keep still.’ Her hands were suddenly motionless, then began again.
    ‘I do know that what I said to Tomand is true: he meant none of it.’ She finished the stitching and laid a dressing over it.
    ‘But he attacked you.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Ronin, ‘and that is what bothers me.’
    She took cream from the bag and began to massage it on to the bruise over his ribs, which was slightly swollen, with the skin turned dark colours.
    ‘Why?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘Do you really care?’
    He said nothing. Her fingers felt good against his skin. Along the ridge of swollen flesh she tenderly stroked the inflamed muscles. She wondered what he was thinking about, fancied it was her. She wiped her hands, and unbound her hair so that it fell thick as a forest, long, swirling about her pale face. Traces of the cream glistened in her hair, iridescent and unreal. Her fingers scooped into the bag, came out, set to work again.
    ‘I had never seen you fight before,’ she said softly. And something in her voice recalled the image: swift pink tongue on