Instead, my new sword leaped upward almost before I knew I was moving it. The two blades collided with a steel clash that echoed through the souk.
One steel clash.
That was all I needed.
Tai chi is all about passive resistance, resolving everything into its opposite. Softness against strength. Yielding and overcoming. To meet this man’s force with more force would be foolish, him being so much bigger and clearly more aggressive than me. Instead, I met it with concession, sliding my blade around his.
He did the work of thrusting. His mistake, since my blade remained in the space he was thrusting against. The only reason it merely scratched his arm, instead of stabbing him, was my reluctance to have it yanked from my hand.
I’d drawn first blood, all the same.
He drew breath in a quick hiss. “What kind of fighting is that?”
“Maybe I fight like a girl,” I said. Warned.
When he drew back to swing again, my blade continued to rest against his. When he sliced the air with his scimitar, my sword coiled around his and struck a second time across the light sleeve on his forearm.
Another stripe of blood.
I was the one who demanded, “Would you stop that?”
“I?” The bastard groped outward with his left hand, picked up one of the display swords and, with a sharp jerk, flipped its scabbard to the stone floor. Such a guy. When in doubt, up the weaponry.
Crap.
Now I had two blades to deal with, using only one. My sword couldn’t flow around both of them, and I’m no two-handed fencer, so I had to make myself flow around the man instead. Try to. Wouldn’t you know I’d be wearing a skirt for this, gauzy but long—dress is very conservative in Arabic countries. At least I had on boots.
The cluttered walls loomed in, too close.
When the man rushed me, I had no choice but to back up—fast—rather than take the full force of his attack. Even as I pivoted out of his way, letting him push past me, I stumbled against another table of merchandise. When he charged again, I dived under his weapons to avoid them both.
Gauzy skirt material twisted around my legs, and sand from the floor grated across my skin. Luckily, I managed to roll to my feet—barely—before hitting the opposite wall of this small souk. My skirt tore under one foot. A dagger fell behind me. “What the hell is your problem?”
He swung with his right-hand sword. With my empty hand, I caught his from behind and encouraged it in the direction it was already going as I dodged, throwing him off balance.
He stumbled.
“Why did you call me a witch?” I demanded.
Catching himself, he now sliced the left-hand blade toward me. I blocked it with my own weapon, one ringing impact and then silent adherence, sinuously winding my blade about his.
That didn’t protect me from the first sword, his scimitar. It flashed upward too quickly. To dodge it, I would either have to drop my sword or—
No way was I dropping my sword. Instead, I sank into an almost impossibly low crouch—without having stretched first, which I would regret—and ducked under his elbow. The scimitar whipped through the air above me. But it missed.
I tried to bob quickly back to my feet, behind my attacker and away from the immediate threat and his weapons, but I’d stepped on my damn skirt, which yanked me off balance long enough for the bastard to bodycheck me.
That was unexpected—which was why it worked. He rushed at me, filling my vision with his shoulder, his elbow. I meant to dance backward myself, like riding a wave. Let him do the work. Let him expend the effort.
But wham! Too soon, my back met a sword-covered wall. The back of my head slammed against a hard scabbard. And Sinbad’s swinging elbow knocked the breath right out of me.
I sank, fingers curling desperately around the grip of my own sword. Don’t drop it, don’t drop it.
As if lifting it were even possible, at that moment.
My damp knees hit the gritty floor, and I folded forward, catching myself with one hand, one fist.
Don’t drop it!
Breathe!
My body obeyed the first command, but not the second. I fought the physical panic that comes from having breath knocked away and arched my neck, straining my face upward.
The stranger’s hulking body loomed above me.
“You will leave Egypt, witch,” he dictated in his impeccable British. “And you will take your friend with you.”
My chest tightened, and my view of him began to waver. Goddess help me….
Maybe it was Isis, or Melusine, or just that universal, maternal force of goddessness that answered my prayer. Or maybe it was just timing.
Hot, exotic air filled my lungs with a rush. And with it came power.
Even as he said, “You will not interfere in matters that do not concern you.”
My fingers clenched around my sword. “Well, it sure as hell concerns me now.” And I swung. A quick, angry arc across his ankles. Not enough to cut anything off—I doubted I had that strength, or this new sword had such sharpness.
But definitely enough to bite. And unexpected.
That’s why it worked.
With a startled cry, the man jumped back. I surged up onto one knee, capturing my gauzy skirt with my free hand, and swung again while he was still off balance. It forced him back a few inches, which was all I wanted.
Before he could stop me, I ducked under his weapons, right past him and toward the front of the shop, no longer trapped.
He lunged, and I practically floated backward on the surge of energy before him. One step. Two steps. I reached my hand back for the door.
“Do you really plan to take this into the street?” I asked. “With all these nice bystanders and policemen?”
The policemen around here carried automatic weaponry, after all.
He scowled, and the air around him seemed to crackle with a most annoying version of alpha-male condescension. “You have no business here.”
But I lived outside the whole male pecking order, thank heavens. I stood my ground and channeled a personal power that was uniquely feminine. “You just made sure I do.”
When I heard the door behind me open, I deliberately ignored it. This stranger and I were in a staring contest, with nothing childish about it.
Then I heard Rhys’s distinctly Welsh voice. “Uffach cols!” he swore. “What’s this? Aren’t you that fellow—”
“From the airport,” I said, not looking back. “Yeah. Now he thinks he’s Sinbad.”
The door opened again, and Rhys shouted, “Shorta! Shorta!”
I hoped that meant police.
My opponent and I continued to glare. Then in a single smooth movement, he spun and vanished through the curtained doorway into the back.
I slowly lowered my sword, my breath resuming for real. Now I felt even less guilty about using a weapon.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I only knew I was coming to Egypt last night…I guess that’s night before last, now,” I said, accepting the bottle of icy cold water Rhys had bought for me. “How the hell is it this guy was waiting for me? At the airport!”
“I didn’t tell many people.” Rhys hadn’t lost the crease of