Snippet

"You are without magic and battle-skills and yet you're here in my tent. A woman alone shouldn't be so trusting."

"She is not alone." 

The disembodied voice was deep and male, it seemed to drift into their ears like smoke made out of shadows. It surprised her but not the man who was holding her tightly against him. Seconds before the voice could be heard, Sayid had rolled her down beneath him, raised himself to a crouch and had pulled his sword from its sheath.

This was not the indulgent and indolent man who had shared a meal with her or the strict and no nonsense man days before, not even the irritated, resigned man that had rescued her from death by the sun. 

She saw the flare of dark blue cloth before she was pushed away by Sayid, his sword meeting the intruder's with a sharp hissing sound.

The intruder was tall and deceptively slender, he moved with a coiled grace that belonged to desert predators. His movements were silent and misleading; the tattoos on his fingers and his black sword marked him for what he was: an assassin. Not just an assassin, but an assassin from the Order of the Iron Falcon, the elite squad that protected the Temple. Judging on the markings on his hands, one of the best. But Sayid met him blow for blow, not even blinking at the sight of an assassin inside his tent.

"Wait!" Safia stood and stepped closer to them.

"Get out and call Fauzi." Sayid ordered as he gritted his teeth, his magic seething inside him, itching to strike, hungry for blood. But the spell on his tongue halted at the sight of Safia running head long toward them and then--

--swatting the assassin with the flat of her hand, right at the side of his head like he was an errant puppy.

Copyright © 2013 by D.F. Jules,