They had to be made of brass, those balls, Leandras thought, watching eight men being swallowed whole by the city guards that poured into the small alley. They were all wearing black, and all the lights had gone out in the rain, but you could still see the men tore their way through deaths that swarmed around them like dutiful ants waiting for their turns to rip a dead insect apart.

And in the middle of it, ahead of the seven snarling bandits, blades spinning in both hands as he moved through that river of men, Ranveer Borkhan was clearing a space around him the same way a dancer cleared a stage with his footwork, making it look like coming out of this mess alive was a possibility, perhaps even a standard routine he'd done countless of times, nothing more.

It wasn't something he could comprehend, no matter how many raids and plunders he'd been through. They were pirates, not soldiers. The lives of their crews were important to manning the ships. Eight against five hundred was not a risk they would ever take. This was warfare, and the man leading them was someone used to facing an army they might or might not defeat. A man whose legacy was known for never losing a battle.

Or so they say.

Legacies were always built from the need for exaggerated stories around campfires by storytellers who omitted what they didn't want you to know.

Nobody wins all the time, and whether or not those stories were true, that legacy would end tonight. He would all die here, unless something changed, or someone were to interfere. No one survived being outnumbered to that extent. The best you could hope for in that situation was dying a hero no one remembered after two generations.

But Leandras hadn't come here, hadn't slipped away in the commotion before his mother could stop him, hadn't followed a man who might be his father to watch him die the second time, or to die with him.

Then again, what difference did it make if he joined the fight? Five hundred against eight or nine would produce the same outcome. It was a one way ticket to dying badly or being taken alive––the latter could mean death or capture of their entire crew if he were to be taken hostage. Mothers would do that for their children. It was why the men didn't find it a good idea for her to lead. Why he wanted to leave, to find his own place in the world.

But the man who was his only ticket out of here was about to die, with or without his help. Unless...

Unless his intuition, this one suspicion that had been bothering him about Ranveer Borkhan was correct.

Leandras chewed on that thought for a time, then unsheathed his blade, and went into the fight.

***

Ranveer swore as he noticed a trail of blood dripping from a cut on his arm he couldn't recall when or how it happened. Didn't have time to finish that thought when a guard came swinging with his broadsword. A quick side step took him off its path, gave him an opening to slip a blade under the man's arm where the armor left a gap, sank an inch-deep bite in it, made sure the arm wouldn't carry any more swords tonight.

Another guard rushed in. A dip out of reflex kept his head on his shoulder and his arm at a convenient height to sever a tendon behind the knee. The man dropped to the ground screaming, tripping his comrades as they failed to step around the human obstacle. The commotion kicked start a brief stampede in the crowded alley, gave him a few seconds to breathe...

...and to notice the pains in his arm and chest that had flared up again sometime in the middle of the fight.

Not a good thing to stop and acknowledge. Not when he'd already been minding those old injuries all night. It threw off his balance, distracted his focus on the enemies, made him more clumsy with his footwork. Could still get away with it if there'd been one or two opponents. But five men at a time––

A sliver of cold air speared by his right ear, snapping his mind back into place, sent his muscles moving before he had time to acknowledge the response. A half turn brought him face to face with the guard, his right-hand blade already in position above his head to catch the long sword on its way down. A twist locked it in place with the curve of his crescent blade, trapping the man in a convenient range for him to split open the torso. Saw the Samarran shifted his weight in response, and before he knew what he was doing, his other hand jutted out, met the dagger that slipped down from the man's sleeve, and caught it before it sank into his liver. A sharp twist earned him a crack of something the man's wrist, would have heard it if the rain and commotion weren't being so loud. A break like that drew one's focus to the injured limb, gave you an opening to end the fight if you could see it coming. Ranveer charged in, finished the job, and tossed the body forward to open up another short path toward the other side.

He hadn't known he was going to do any of those things. Years and years of having fought in battle taught you to read, to anticipate an attack. The movements that preceded them were pretty much the same, how you dodge them became habit after enough practice. Fight enough men, and through repetition your muscles remembered what to do when you saw a twitch of an arm or a leg, even a glance at your blade was information to process. The longer you survive, the easier it gets to slip into that state, and the harder it is to get out.

Killing was a drug that never left your system. When those instincts kicked in, nothing else mattered anymore. No useless memories swam around in your head, no petty emotions pulled you back, gave you second thoughts about moving forward. All those filth you've been dragging around faded, painted over by the need to survive one breath at a time. Nothing cleared your mind quite like getting into a fistfight with Death. Nothing in life was quite as pure, as honest as killing to stay alive. And he had been, no matter how many times he'd pried himself from it, an addict of battles and fights with Death from the very first time he'd been thrown into one.

And it was happening again. He was fighting in a haze, his awareness of everything else fading behind the noises of battle and the smell of blood. The longer he fought, the more guards he killed, the harder it was to remember what he was there for, what he had to do, where he was heading. He wished Jarem or Ghaul were here to remind him of it. Maybe even Zahara.

A pitiful thought, that.

Since when do you rely on so many people to tether you to the ground?

***

You'd have to be close to see he was smiling, and closer still to hear him laughing in that loud, downpour of rain that turned red before it hit the floor. The congested alley made it near impossible to see anything past the man in front, the black armors and black garments from both sides made the night darker, more difficult to differentiate between the void and the humans who stretched it, and then the rain halved whatever was left of that piss-poor visibility. Even then, even in all that chaos of uniformed bloodshed and the indistinguishable noises of the soon-to-be-dead and the wounded, you could see the former Salar, the king, the legend, the mad man, carving a ring of blood and enjoying the sight of it. You could see men from both sides of the fight pausing to look, to stare, in the middle of all that killing.

It was difficult not to look, Leandras admitted, and by then all of the bandits who were still alive had gathered around Ranveer Borkhan, whether to fight alongside him as a group for a better chance of survival, or because it was the safest place in that alley to be, he couldn't tell. But no one could see it, no one had been observing him as closely as Leandras had, how the man they had been following was no longer aware of anything at all but the blades in his hands and where it must land to kill. Not even his own injuries––old and new––that were beginning to tax his strength and precision.

He was going to die killing everyone, and he was going to do it smiling if no one interfered.

Leandras killed the guard in front of him, squeezed his way through the gap it created, leaped over another body to reach the guard about to be gutted by Borkhan, and took him out. Got himself into the circle––

––hopped back just in time before the old man split his throat open. Grunted. Closed in again. Couldn't find an opening with those curved blades aiming to kill every living thing in sight. It was just as Leandras had guessed. He was no longer able to tell enemies and allies apart. "Borkhan!"

The name went over his head like another blade that failed to hit the mark. Or it did, but everything failed to penetrate that sheild of madness he'd locked himself behind. Leandras pushed forward, this time, catching one of the curved blades with his bare hand before it took his head off, screaming the name again as it bit into his palm. Its twin came swinging in response. Leandras ducked under, felt the blade miss him by a hair, brought himself up chest to chest with Ranveer, and let go of the blade. Slammed that bloodied fist into the man's jaw.

It knocked him off balance, sent him stumbling side way half a step, before he righted himself back up, quick as a cat and despite his age and injuries. Leandras stepped in before the man could get those blades back into position, snatched a fistful of his robe, and yanked him up to face him. "Look at me." It came out of him in a croak, a voice so dry and he could hardly make out the words. "Look at me!"

A blink, no more, from the man who might be his father, at words he had been needing to say for decades, to someone who mattered. No replies to that. No reactions he could see...and then the curved blades came back up swiftly, aiming for his throat, gave him no time, no room to dodge. Fuck.

"Down," hissed Borkhan.

The two swords went over his head as he dropped low, crossed in the middle, and took down the guard behind Leandras. "Your mother will kill me for this," he jested. The blades were now back by his side. The haze in his eyes faded, replaced by something close to fatigue. His chest was heaving desperately for air, for a break. He was human, after all.

Something caught Leandras' eyes before he could respond. He stepped forward, brought himself close enough for an embrace, drove his sword under Ranveer's arm to kill the guard coming at his back.

"You have a plan," said Leandras, still working to get the sword out of the dying guard. They were standing close, close enough to feel their body heat clashing, to see the similarity of their height and built, and perhaps also something else he hadn't recognized until now. My heart, he thought, is beating so fast, so loud. "Tell me, and let's get out of here."

A small silence. One that would have stretched longer if time were to allow it. There was a change in those blue eyes as he considered the proposal, a slip of something that felt like an approval, like acceptance.

Ranveer nodded, his lips quirked up into a boyish grin of a kid about to unleash hell. "Watch my back," he said. "Get me to the other side and up on that roof. Keep your eyes open." A small pause now, to taste the words. A decision made swiftly. "And don't die before me, do you understand?"

Leandras released the breath he'd been holding, and with it something else disappeared, something he'd been carrying for a long time. He raised his sword, and turned to deal with the enemies––their enemies. "Go," he told the man. Father or not, it no longer mattered to him, he realized. "I've got your back."

***

By the time Akshay arrived at the alley with his own guards, the ground was littered with corpses. Whoever had done this was either on a suicide mission or armed with a plan he thought would get them out of this mess. He counted five men still alive, fighting against perhaps four hundred. They fought as a group with their backs to each other, not trying to move anywhere, only to stay alive for as long as they could.

... No, that's not it.

To stall for time. To distract.

The thought got him running to seek higher ground. He scrambled up the nearest pile of old barrels, scanned the alley again for the missing piece of the puzzle, and spotted two more men carving their ways forward.

"There! By the grain storage!" he yelled at the guards behind him. "Stop those men!"

The wind must have carried his voice through the rain, toward the two intruders he'd caught red-handed in the middle of something. One of them paused at the sound, turned toward Akshay, and straightened.

Everything changed after that. He could feel the event turning like a sudden switch in wind direction at sea, his sails flapping erratically now from miscalculation. The man at the front picked up speed as the guards arrowed in on command. But there was stamina in that gait now, a finely-tuned, honed-in focus to the steps he took, a purpose to running that didn't look like a flight for survival. He was not, Akshay realized with a cold racing down his spine, looking at a prey being forced to run at all, but a predator switching in speed and direction as it was given, at long last, the window it had been waiting for.

And that predator was coming for him.

Akshay unsheathed his blade, anchored his feet into position. Come, you son of a bitch.

Twenty paces in, and the man made a sharp turn, darting left toward a building, the one closer to Akshay. His comrade followed closely, covering the leader's back to make sure he reached it alive. Akshay looked up, saw the stairs leading to an empty roof deck, and grabbed the first officer running by carrying what he needed.

"Give me that crossbow."

The officer, surprised by the unexpected command, fumbled to get the weapon off its belt. Akshay kept his eyes on the two figures as he waited. They were at the external staircase now. The second man had turned to stand guard as the leader sprinted up the building.

He snatched the bow from the officer, fitted the arrow in a hurry, made his aim and pulled the trigger.

It missed the leader by a hand halfway up the stairs. He'd miscalculated the wind and the rain that slowed down the shaft. By the time he'd finished fitting another arrow, the man had already made it to the roof deck.

And there, with his twin blades gone, tucked or tossed away somewhere, holding only a burning torch he must have taken from one of the balconies, the man turned to face him, unprotected, unarmed, and exposed, as if certain no arrows could reach him.

Akshay raised the crossbow again, taking into account, this time, the wind, the rain, small errors he might make in the dark. A pity there was no lightning to aid his vision, but he knew he was close enough––good enough––to land it where he needed, to see where the arrow would pierce the flesh, perhaps, even, to hear his victim fall to the ground if he listened carefully.

Close enough, he realized belatedly, to see the man slip out a small container from his tunic just before he pulled the trigger, and flung it against the wooden shed behind him. The glass bottle shattered against its roof, spilled some kind of liquid onto the wood. The torch that followed landed on the same spot, and in a split second, despite the rain that was still pouring down on them, the structure went up in flame.

In iridescent blue flame.

Everything came to a halt after that. The guards who were fighting down below, the man guarding the stairs, his own finger on the trigger of the crossbow. Everyone stopped to look. Even the rain seemed to have thinned down, held its breath, waiting.

It was difficult not to. Up there, lit by the backdrop of blue flame so bright it could be seen from the other side of the Barai, the man on the roof stood like a statue of victory, looking down over something he'd conquered, his black robe stretched taut by the wind as if to announce the arrival of more death and destruction. Behind him, the silhouette of two identical black-pommeled blades jutted out over his shoulders, their enormous, iconic, blue moonstones set into the hand guard caught the light, emitted a glow that rivaled the blue fire behind him.

And on that black robe, stitched in threads of silver, the crest of Salar Muradi of Rasharwi hammered the silence and the men in place, froze them all in the alley below.

It didn't take that mark being on display, Akshay thought, or the sight of those obsidian blades anyone who'd seen them once would remember for life. He would have recognized that figure from anywhere without those things had there been enough light to see. Most men who'd served under him would. Most men here had.

The acknowledgment was there, in the crippling stillness that weighted the moment, in the hush of breaths that rippled through the sound of rain that had since turned into a light shower. And then, just as Akshay had expected, shocked silence turned into confusion, and confusions turned into arguments. No one doubted the identity of the man on that roof. Everyone doubted their next course of action. Salar Muradi was a god among men, a figure that commanded loyalty everywhere he led, but he was no longer leading the men here, and loyalty, like honor, was a luxury only those with options could afford.

It was pointless, he thought with an accompanying bad feeling in his stomach. Revealing his identity didn't guarantee he would get out of here alive, it guaranteed being the center of attention, which could easily land him the opposite outcome. It would take only one word from a man of rank, one word from someone who might benefit from his death, or simply someone who found it a good idea to remind the rest that the current man in charge wanted his father captured, formally alive, but discreetly dead.

But no one, Akshay knew without a shred of doubt in his mind, would understand that truth better than the man on that roof.

The realization shot through his veins like lightning as he put the pieces together. This was not a revelation made to get out of here alive. The unique, iridescent blue fire, the height at which it was lit, the way it could be seen everywhere in the Barai...the way he'd stalled for time...

A rumbling came again, this time not from above, but below. A rumbling of footsteps, of warriors in numbers that might exceed theirs thundering toward them from somewhere south.

Someone had opened a gate to let an army inside. Someone who had seen the signal fire.

And there, Akshay realized his biggest mistake of the night. These men were not here to rescue a bunch of pirates at all.

They were here to take the Barai.

He raised his crossbow once more, made his aim at the rightful Salar of Rasharwi still standing on the roof, and pulled the trigger.

***

A/N: Thanks again for waiting. And now we head back to Lasura ;)