The Execution of Feather Blue
Jannik of Anselm stepped around Feather Blue’s unmoving body, aimed carefully, and put a bullet straight through an assassin’s head.
"It’s over," he said, with a voice like shattered glass. "She’s gone."
If there had been anyone left to watch him, they might have been startled by the change in his demeanor. Gone was the casual way he held himself: Gone was the smirking self-assurance. All that remained was hollow-eyed resignation.
“She’ll be back,” Suzeanne said.
She, too, was changed. All her carefully cultivated coolness had evaporated. Blood and dirt stuck to the hems of her skirts, and she hardly seemed to notice: she just fired and spun, and fired again.
The townspeople had fled. The guards were dead. The six remaining attackers were the only ones close by, and one way or the other, what they had seen would soon cease to matter.
“It’s been three minutes, Suzy. She’s gone.”
“Don’t you dare.” Suzeanne fired her last round and ducked behind Jannik to reload. “You do not get to give up on her so easily.”
Jannik was watching the shadows between buildings. There were five assailants left, staying just out of sight. It was only a matter of time until he and Suzeanne ran out of bullets, and then it was going to be over.
“It’s her choice,” Jannik said, sounding strangely gentle for a man facing down his own death. “You have to let her go. We owe her that much, at least.”
“I know that!” Suzeanne whirled around to face her fiancé, all naked fury and desperation. “After everything we’ve done she should leave us here to die.” She raised her weapon and fired. Behind Jannik, another assassin collapsed.
“She should do that,” Suzeanne said. Her pistol was tossed to the ground, empty and useless. “She won't.”
Suzeanne laughed. It was a bitter, ugly sound.
“Have you not been paying attention?” she asked.
There was a backup pistol in the pocket of Jannik’s jacket. Suzeanne had to bend down to retrieve it, heedful of the drying blood.
“She let you arrest her, Jannik. She could have escaped a million times over. She decided to stay.”
Jannik’s gun was empty. He didn’t care. “Suzy," he said, "she let us kill her.”
There was a moment of perfect silence as the two stared at each other.
Neither of them saw the assassin slink out of the shadows, picking up a rifle from one of the fallen guards.
They’d let themselves get distracted. Months of planning, and it could all have been for nothing: just two more corpses in a square already filled with them.
By all rights, the bullet should have hit them.
Instead, there was a flash of blue.