Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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glittering… Shkai'ra slipped the shield-thong off her arm, twisting her body as she flung, the shield
spinning like a giant discus. It struck his throat; he pitched back to lie against the wall, biting for air as his
crushed windpipe refused to pass the air his chest heaved to draw. The crossbow twanged, the bolt
knocking a chip out of the stone wall across the room.
Shkai'ra turned, staggered.No more. Over . Except for the one with no left arm to free his pinned right
arm with; quiet now, he stared up at her. She wrenched the sword loose, finished him. Grey edged the
corners of her vision, a grey-red mist that faded in across the icy clarity of the battlemind; the hysterical
strength that had worn her like a cloak vanished. She toppled forward like a cut tree and lay, gasping and
straining not to faint, tears and mucus streaming across her face as pain hit.
The boy. Silence had fallen, the strangled man passed out and soon to die; the hanging lamp over the
card table swinging was the only motion, though by making every shadow sway and shift it filled the
whole room with false motion.I did come here and do this all for the zteafakazboy. Where did he go ?
She moaned, forcing her hands underneath herself and levering her torso up. A ragged breath, and she
rolled onto one side.Damn . The cut along her ribs—when did I get that?—was shallow, but too deep
to clot, making a sheet of red down her side. Blood was flowing from the leg-wound, mixed with oily
yellow matter. She ripped off the remains of her tunic and clamped it against the cut with an elbow, and
crawled sidewinder fashion with one elbow and one knee over to the table, which still bore tall clay
tumblers and an opened bottle; she hooked an elbow over the table edge and came to a knee, grabbed
the bottle and poured half a dozen swallows down her throat. It was wine, cut with brandy, cloying sweet
and strong. The grey receded a little and she half-fell into one of the chairs. Bending over, snarling at the
pain, she managed to rip off enough of a dead man's shirt to bind the bandage crudely to her ribs.
She glared around. "He couldn't have gotten out the door," she said; her voice startled her for a moment,
a breathy rasp. She drank more of the wine. "Trapdoor to the cellar's closed. Door to the other room's
still closed." Most of the first floor was this single large dining hall. "Upstairs, then." There was a spiral
stair at one end of the room, curling around a post of carved and inlaid oak; the stairs were beautifully
inlaid parquetry.
She heaved herself to her feet; the room swayed, then steadied. "Lixand!" The name sounded strange in
her ears.Shit, what language am I talking ? The bad leg nearly turned under her, unable to bear any
but the slightest weight; she swore long and savagely in the ripping, clicking gutturals of Kommanzanu.
There seemed to be a plate of Arkan-glass between her brain and her tongue, as if she was moving it like
a puppet through a glove. "Lixand, it's—" She stopped.He's not likely to think of me as his mother .
"Lixand, I've come from Megan, to take you home."Come down those stairs, you little shit .
No answer. She switched the sword to her left hand, to use as a crutch; a terrible thing to do to a good
weapon, but devils drove. Thump-drag-wheeze, over to the base of the stairs. Prop the point against the
lowest one.
"Lixand! Come out, boy!"Thump , up a step. She gasped through clenched teeth, leaned panting on the
stair-rail. Another step. Another. Faster, and the black square of the opening to the upper floor was just
above her.
She stopped just below it, bellows-panting.Maybe he got out one of the doors and I didn't notice !
she thought.Better take a look here. City boy, he won't go far in the dark outside anyway . Shkai'ra
put the point of the sword on the next step, inched her head up through the opening.
A whistle of cloven air warned her; but she was slow, slow. Too slow to do more than begin to drop,