Ruby Ruins

frame was dented and gouged, the shine vanished. Stairs lay to the right, runners battered by years of use. Ōbhin pivoted for it. She raced after him.
A face appeared at the top of the stairs, nose running. A slender figure with a wild look, skin pale, a jerkin of studded leather armoring his torso. Rust tarnished the steel rivets. He raised a crossbow.
Ōbhin cursed in his native tongue and dived right. Avena’s body moved before she could even recognize the threat held in the bandit’s arms. She threw herself to the left, her feet acting by instinct. A loud twang snapped through the air over the blaring alarm.
A dark shape blurred through the air and slammed into the wooden floor. She hit the floor on her shoulder, her padded gambeson blunting the impact. She rolled up into a crouch and activated her binder. Purple light burst from the gem set in the weapon’s recessed butt.
“No need for this, Creg,” Ōbhin called. He stood to the right of the stairs, a stoic warrior. He had the brown skin of an easterner. Not one of the Tethyrians, who abounded in Kash, but from the more distant Qoth, a land of mountains. A scar twisted his right cheek. He wore his black hair cut short, face shaved smooth.
Sable gloves still adorned his hands.
“We’re just here to talk. Find out what Ust knows.”
“Suck on a pus-filled roach, traitor!” Creg growled. “I don’t answer to the Brotherhood no more. Black-filled bastards want my head. I ain’t givin’ it to ‘em.”
“We’re not with the Brotherhood,” Avena called, feeling dirty just at the thought. The Brotherhood of Masons and Builders were one of the two major crime syndicates plaguing the city of Kash. They and the Free Associate of Rangers warred through street gangs for control of all manner of illicit activities from Tethyrian narcotics to trafficking girls and boys for their customers’ dark appetites. Their tendrils spread out across the Kingdom of Lothon.
“That fat healer you work for’s bendin’ over and takin’ it up the arse from the Boss. So you’re as good as workin’ for those pus-infected spawn! So you want me, gotta come up here and take my Black-damned head yourself!”
Avena hated how right Creg was. Dualayn had made a deal with Grey Kalon, the current leader of the Brotherhood. Early spring, a band of highwaymen had abducted Avena and Dualayn. The thugs had brought them to speak with Grey and his unusual associates. It had been how Avena met Ōbhin.
He’d killed Dualayn’s bodyguard because he fought with Ust’s band. Now Ōbhin was polishing his soul clean of the Black crimes he’d committed, finding the gleam that all humans possessed. Any could reflect Elohm’s Colours if the grime was scoured clean.
Even that odious Creg upstairs.
“We have to rush him,” Ōbhin whispered. “Ideas?”
She glanced around the room, not spotting any other stairs. The ceiling looked rickety. With Ōbhin’s resonance sword, he could quickly cut a hole through it, but it would be hard to scramble up it. The ceiling was out of her reach though Ōbhin’s greater height might let him snag it. Before any more ideas popped into her head, the blaring alarm ran out of power.
Used a small gem, she thought, her ears ringing.
Shouts echoed outside. Boyish. Enthusiastic. She glanced at the door to see a group of the youths, some almost her own age, forming up outside, a dozen or more holding makeshift weapons and all sporting green bandannas.
She realized why they wore green. Not to mark them as loyal to the Greens political faction, desiring a return of a dynasty of kings who had extinguished their bloodline in a civil war over eighty years ago, but to mark them as the local street gang. They pulled their bandannas up to cover their noses and mouths.
“Green-Face Boys!” she hissed to Ōbhin.
“Niszeh’s Black Tone.” He cursed to one of the pagan gods his people worshiped. “He paid them off.”
“We’re in Rangers territory,” she said.
Ōbhin scowled and spat. “Can you hold them?”
He could do it with ease. A dozen boys against a resonance blade wielded by a trained swordsmen would be cut to ribbons. They’d be left bleeding and dying, limbs severed, bodies hacked apart with the same ease she’d find in slicing through warm cheese.
Ōbhin didn’t want to kill these boys. The horror lurked in his eyes. He trusted her to find him another solution.
“Yes!” She glanced at the stairs. “What about the crossbow?”
Ōbhin darted into sight of Creg at the top of the stairs.
TWANG!
Ōbhin already moved, ducking back into cover as the crossbow hurtled down and impaled the floor near its brethren. Ōbhin pounded up the stairs before Creg could reload. She heard a vile curse from above. A crossbow hurtled down at Ōbhin. He raised his left arm in warding. The heavy, wooden stock slammed into the chain covering his forearm. Metal rattled. He grunted, kept running.
She scrambled to the right and rushed at the door, gripping her binder tight.
It would be an effective club even without her enhanced strength. However, its amethyst jewelchine had an additional effect that triggered on a hard impact. It tangled up those struck in bonds of purple energy for a quarter of an hour or so, squeezing limbs tight to torso and tripping up legs.
It took a great level of strength to break free.
She reached the front door and faced the mass of ruffians and young hooligans rushing at her. She kicked the door shut and fell into the fighting stance Ōbhin had taught her; weight on her back foot, her right foot pointed towards the direction of attack, her body turned sideways to provide the smallest profile to her enemies.
Boys shouted outside as she raised her binder into a guard position.
 

Chapter Two
Ōbhin’s head throbbed from