A/N: Because snowdragonct left me the best review ever (I have that particular reaction to cliffies myself!), I'm getting this out today instead of tomorrow. To the reader who asked about Heero: that'd be next chapter. To everyone: sorry about the shortness, this is where I had to break it. Please don't kill me again? Also, violence warning.

Disclaimer: not my characters, not my world, not my quote.

Chapter 11

"'Good. I had a thought. All I had to do was combine thought with opportunity and I'd have something else: a chance.'"

Steven Brust's Dragon pg. 269

In retrospect, I thought as my knees buckled and I landed on an unfamiliar street, South Adrilankha made almost perfect sense. It was the Easterner's side of town, so most Dragaerans never came to the area. It made a damn good hiding place.

There was absolutely no one in the general area, I noted as I shoved myself up again and ran toward the warehouse I'd seen in my head. The lack of people, Easterners or Dragaerans, made sense if someone bleeding with a naked weapon had dropped straight into the street right before I had. And hey, I fit the bleeding-with-a-naked-weapon description too, so anyone that hadn't bugged out when Zechs popped in had probably done it immediately when I showed up.

I slid on the ground a bit and looked down to see a blood trail going toward the warehouse. Seedy and falling down, it wasn't exactly a place I'd spend a lot of time, but then I wasn't stupid enough to purposely try to start a house war either. I did a quick mental poke and found a teleport block up around the place for both incoming and outgoing people. The door proved to be locked but not barred. I sheathed my daggers, yanked a pick and a torsion wrench out of my hair, and had the lock open in a second.

I pocketed both thin pieces of metal rather than take the time to make them stay in my braid, pulled out my daggers again, said a quick prayer, and dove through the door. If I survived this, I was going to have massive bruising on my shoulders the next day, I reflected.

Diving turned out to be a good plan, as something nasty shot by over my head and impacted the door. Apparently I'd made too much noise coming in. Story of my life, and hence why I knew to duck.

"Son of a bitch!" I spit out as I got upright and realized there were two people in the room and not one. Trowa's original job had been to find Zechs's boss. I'd asked him where Zechs had gone. Apparently the two answers were the same.

"In over your head, aren't you boy?" the taller of the two men said. Unlike Zechs and I, he was actually wearing the Jhereg house colors since he hadn't been undercover in a room full of Phoenix Guards. The black trousers and grey tunic were silk, and I would have put them at very expensive. His ginger hair was neatly combed back in a way that made me want to jump this guy just to see if I could mess up his appearance. This was the boss. And I'd just run in without backup.

Oh shit.

"I'll leave you two to it then," he said, and turned and walked out the back way. I let him go; I couldn't stop him and he wasn't my target anyway. I did take a split second to pull a trickle of power from the Orb and throw a hope and a prayer after him.

Unfortunately, that split second almost got me spitted. I twisted aside just in time to avoid that and took a deep gash along my left side instead to match the shallow one I'd taken earlier. I could feel the blood trickling down and began worrying about bloodloss.

"You shouldn't have gotten involved," Zechs remarked as he pulled back to circling distance. His hood was down now and I had to wonder why the hell he didn't pull his hair back since it was almost as long as mine. Also white. Made me wonder if he'd had a sorcery accident at a young age, but I was a bit too busy trying not to die to ask.

"Like I had a choice," I shot back. I calculated odds. Both of us had bad side wounds, but mine was new and bleeding freely and Zechs had had a chance to bandage his while I'd been picking the door lock. I could try to keep him talking long enough for help to show, but everyone else was probably tied up with the guards and I wasn't sure I had that much time.

"I never thought the council would go so far as to hire an assassin expressly to protect the Empress," he said conversationally as he feinted high, slashed low with the other hand, and came back to stab at my head. I caught the feint enough to ignore it, blocked the slash, and took a cut across my cheek while I returned a cut to his wrist.

"Yeah, well, I never thought anyone would be dumb enough to purposely start a war!" I scrambled back, trying to keep tabs on the walls and the various packing crates scattered around the room.

"I suppose we are even, then."

I dodged another few slashes and thanked the gods he had daggers like I did and not a sword. I also mentally damned the council members to wander at Deathsgate for all eternity; Zechs was much better with a blade than any of the information they'd given me had indicated. If he'd had a longer reaching blade, I would've been dead already.

I saw an opening and took it, planting my right dagger in Zechs' left shoulder, yanking it out again in the same motion. He shouted and ignored the pain enough to take the open shot at my head. I got my left dagger up quickly enough to deflect the blade, by the hilt cracked against the side of my head.

I yelled and fell backwards as the world spun around me. I landed on the remains of a splintered crate and rolled to avoid getting spitted. I came up in one of the places I'd been trying to avoid, an almost u-shape created by the large boxes. As injured as I was, I wasn't going to be able to jump over them and trying to get through the narrow gaps between them would leave me wide open.

I tried to stand and nearly fell over. It seemed like time had slowed down. Zechs was still two paces away from me, outside of striking distance. My left arm wasn't working properly anymore. I needed to stand before I got killed, so I slammed my left-hand dagger into the packing crate next to me and used it to lever myself up just in time, leaving it imbedded in the wood because I didn't have the strength to pull it out again.

I clumsily parried the cut aimed at me, somehow keeping it from connecting at all. My vision was starting to fuzz. Zechs seemed to be swaying on his feet too, and I was glad to know I'd managed to do enough damage myself that he'd need a healer. If I was really lucky, after he killed me he wouldn't have time to get to a healer and would die of bloodloss. Of course, his boss would probably just have him revivified and none of this would be over.

Except it would for me, because I'd be dead.

I stumbled backwards, leaning on the crate with my left hand and praying I wouldn't trip over anything because I knew I wouldn't make it up again. I was about to die, and I was most pissed off because I'd gone through all this trouble and fixed absolutely nothing. The boss had walked out the back. He'd had his attempt on the Empress, which hopefully someone else could keep from becoming a war. I didn't know if all my friends were still alive. I wasn't even going to get a chance to finalize Zechs.

I somehow managed to back into one of the gaps between boxes without running into any of them or getting spitted. My swings were getting feebler, and I was starting to pick up shallow cuts along my right arm from where I got my arm in the way and not my dagger. My vision was fading to red.

I tripped and fell sideways when the crate I was supporting myself on suddenly ended. I thought I was done then, but instead of hitting the ground I ran into the wall and used the unexpected support to stay upright enough to jerk away from the dagger about to plant itself in my side.

Zechs staggered too as he backed up to swing at me again and I was even more angry that I'd gotten this close to ending the entire damn situation only to lose at the end. I was using both arms to keep myself from sliding down the wall and neither wanted to hold for long.

I was angry. I was tired. I was dying. Fuck this. I'm not going down alone. Zechs aimed his dagger at my heart. My left hand skidded down the wall as blood from my side made it more slippery and I dropped sideways a few inches. Being off-kilter almost felt right with the way my head was spinning. I raised my right arm still clutching my single dagger as much as I could, shoved off the wall, grabbed his arm with my left hand as well as I could, and pulled. Neither of us was strong enough to stand once thrown off balance, and we fell into each other.

My only thought was Oh good as I realized I had actually managed to get my right arm to cooperate enough to put my dagger in line with Zechs' head. The point hit his chin, and momentum from collision with me and then the floor slammed it home.

Through some freak occurrence of gravity, I ended up face up and not face down. I didn't have the strength to lift my head and look, but the pain and difficulty breathing told me Zechs' last strike had missed my heart and instead taken my lung. I stared up as the red-misted ceiling faded to black.

Just before I was gone completely, I thought I heard someone calling my name.