Mind Your Step, Draft 1, CH 12

Tibs watched the thugs as he followed Heather through the market. They’d yet to harass anyone, but he figured it would happen. Then, he would figure out how to deal with them.

He stayed outside the shops, observing. On the shop streets, the thugs were of a higher class. Less thugs outright, and more merchants in a trade that involved convincing merchants to hand over some of their profits to avoid trouble. While he wouldn’t steal from merchants like these because, unless he found out otherwise, he considered them as honest as merchants got, he didn’t feel inclined to spend his energy protecting them.

Once in the marketplace, his view changed. Mosts of the booths were occupied by smaller merchants, some, for whom this was all they could afford to operate from. He left those to the guards, since they were apt to act on their complaints. He looked for those on the periphery. Those with nothing more than a box, or a basket, for whom the copper they received in exchange for the little they had to sell could mean the difference between going to sleep with something in their stomach, or not.

The poor folks, here more out of desperation than because they had a craft, were convenient targets for the poor thugs because, unlike what Heather believed, guards wouldn’t bother helping them.

She was negotiating with a leatherworker for a set of travel packs to replace the one she’d hurriedly bought to chase him when he fled Jisteisteon. He’d looked at what the smith had on the walls, and pointed to the one he wanted without paying much attention. It was more about letting Heather feel like he was part of the shopping, instead of getting something perfect. He’d pick it up when hers were done.

He fought the impulse to intervene when the thugs extorted the few coins from the woman with the basket of wilted flowers. He’d see to it she got them back once he was done teaching them a lesson, but that meant he needed to find out where their hideout was. And that meant— The thugs took off after shoving her, with the speed that said they’d noticed a threat.

“Tyrone!” Heather yelled as Tibs took off after them.

The thugs vanished into the alley as a guard helped the woman up. He couldn’t see them as he entered that alley, but had them in his sense. An Air etching sent him to the roof, then he picked up speed.

He suffused himself with Fever, intent on closing the distance before they reached the next road when a terrified scream came from behind him. A look over his shoulder showed Heather, flailing as she fell toward a roof from much higher than she should have been able to reach.

With a curse, he formed water under her and stopped running. He let go of Fever so he wouldn’t have to explain his eyes.

“What are you doing?” he demanded as she swam to the edge of the water. He absorbed it, depositing her on the roof.

“Me?” she got to her feet. “You run off to do I can’t know what. What did you think I was going to do?”

“Trust me for once.”

She snorted. “You’re the one who pointed out we’re not friends. What are you doing?”

He tried to find the thugs within his sense, but they’d disappeared within the mass of city folk. He reined in his anger. “Nothing, anymore.” She had something resembling a point.

“Why did you run off?” she demanded, arms crossed over her chest.

He fought dismissing her question. “After the thugs. But I lost them.” He redirected the situation. “What was that?” he motioned above her.

“I’m not the jumper you are,” she replied after a few heartbeats. “So, I used my element.”

“How?” she didn’t know etching, so how would she have—

“I coated it over me. Then, moved it up, the way it sticks to a stone when I throw it up. I didn’t think it would send me so high.” What followed was said reluctantly. “Thanks for the water.”

“I wasn’t going to let you crash, Heather. But the middle of something isn’t the time to try something new.” The hypocrisy struck him, and he chuckled. “Take it from someone who can’t seem to stop testing new stuff in the middle of fighting. It causes more problems than solves.”

“It’s not like I thought I’d need to practice that until I had to chase you to the roofs.”

“How did you know I was on the roofs?”

She stared at him. “How long have I been chasing you, Tyrone? You always take to the roofs. I figured you bothered with the alley because you weren’t going to let people see you used water to get you there.”

Wrong element, correct reasoning.

“A guard helped the woman.” The tone implied she meant something by that. “You know. Like you said no guard would do.”

“I didn’t see them chasing the thugs.” But it explained the cause of their run.

“So you wanted him to leave her on the ground? Shouldn’t her well-being be more important than catching the thugs?”

“And let them do that to someone else?” he snapped.

“So you want to punish them, not help her.”

“She wasn’t injured.”

“How do you know?”

He barely kept himself from telling her the woman’s Life and Fever essence had been fine.

“Seems to me that you find it easy to justify things so you can do whatever it is you decide to do.”

“I don’t need to justify myself.”

She rolled her eyes. “It might make it easier to trust you if you didn’t have to do it at all. Are you running off again, or can I go back to getting things ready for once we leave?”

“I won’t find them in the crowd.” He headed to the edge of the roof and dropped off. He waited for her as she held on to the edge to lower herself and then let go. Then he followed her to the leathersmith’s booth.

*

Tibs parried, then dodged. He feinted, which Heather didn’t fall for, and he was on the defensive again. He felt the pulls and pushes of her essence on his sword. They were becoming subtler. Then, his foot slipped forward, and he was on his back, the tip of her sword to his chest.

“You used your element.”

Her smile was smug. “You’re so good you can’t slip on a loose stone?”

“Training grounds are kept free of those.” He wasn’t sure that he’d sensed her essence around his foot since he’d been focused on how she used it on his attacks and defense.

She offered him her hand. “Does it matter? You’re on your back, I win.” She pulled him to his feet.

“Some people would call that cheating.”

“This is training. You said I needed to use my essence.”

“So you wouldn’t use it in a fair fight?” He nodded to the approaching man.

“Looks to me like you can use a better training partner,” the man said. “One who can stay on his feet.” He smiled. “Unless we’re in private, then I don’t mind being on my back for you, my lady.”

Tibs snorted, earning a glare for both of them. “You’re no lady, Heather.”

“Maybe I need to teach you how to treat a woman,” the man said.

“I can take care of myself,” Heather said. “You want to fight me, I’ll fight you.”

“Winner takes the other to bed.”

“Heather, you don’t—”

“You’re on.” She attacked.

With a sigh, Tibs moved away. No matter who won, this training session was over. He kept watch. More to make sure the man didn’t cheat in underhanded ways than because he thought Heather would need help. In his experience, contests with time in bed as the reward could lead to desperation on the part of the one issuing it if they weren’t winning.

Tibs was surprised Heather didn’t use her element during the fight. Her tone had led him to think he’d do what she needed to put the man in his place. By the time her sword flew out of her hand, they’d gathered a crowd.

She surprised the man by not letting that be the end of the fight, and Tibs was impressed by her tenacity, as well as how she fought without weapons. She used all her body, not just her fists or feet. When she threw herself at the man, they crashed. His surprised expression said he hadn’t expected her to weigh so much.

He shoved her off, and she kicked his sword away before he grabbed it. Unarmed, Tibs thought she’d win. The man was clumsy in his swings. But once he got a hand on her and slammed her to the ground, she was too winded to continue.

“My bed,” the man said, grinning.

“Don’t wait for me, Tyrone,” Heather said as the man helped her to her feet.

He almost protested. They had more important things to do than sex. But that meant he was without her supervision. He needed to take advantage of it.

*

“And what have you been up to?” Heather asked as she stepped into their room, smiling as if she’d…well, handed Tibs over to be thrown into a cell.

“If I tell you, you don’t tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“Don’t want to hear about what you’re missing out on?”

“I have no interest in you,” he replied.

She snorted. “It’s not like I’m the only person in the city.”

He snorted. “I’m not interested, that’s all. Do I have your word?”

“Sure. It’s not like I’m in the habit of talking about what I do in another man’s bed.”

“Keep it to other people’s beds. I’m not interested in walking in on you doing that stuff.”

“That’s fair. So, what did you do?”

“I returned to the marketplace. I was hoping to find those thugs again and follow them back to where they hide.” He shrugged. “They didn’t show up.”

“And you didn’t go avenging any other poor sellers?”

The mocking wasn’t loud enough he called it out.

“The guards were out in force. Might have been in response to the first assault.”

“So the guards do care.” This time, the mocking tone deserved an eye roll.

“I’m going back tomorrow.” He’d debated keeping that from her. He’d seen the looks the men who had watched her fight gave her as she left with the victor. She’d get more offers. But he figured that by being upfront, she’d be less suspicious of him if he had to go off on his own later to deal with them.

“I can do with more shopping,” she said, stretching on her bed and letting out the kind of satisfied sigh that, if there had been someone else in the bed with her, would have sent Tibs running out of the room before that started.