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Men use knives in Gorhaut, of course, but not as they do in Portezza.
Rudel grins at him, confident and cocky, and Blaise grins back, slow and sure, waiting, knowing that if he does, if only he's patient, Rudel will break first - except that when he does Blaise moves a fraction too slow even so, failing to get up his own blade or move away or do anything other than stand there as Rudel put a knife to his throat.
"How many wins in a row does that make now?"
Blaise swallows, feeling the blade bite his skin before Rudel pulls it back.
"I'm getting better," he says.
Rudel shakes his head, his left hand reaching up to touch where his knife had cut Blaise. "You should be more aggressive."
Blaise thinks about sweeping Rudel's legs out from under him. If he moves quickly, if Rudel won't see him coming - and then Rudel grins again, cleaning his knife on a piece of cloth as he brings his fingers to his lips, licking what little of Blaise's blood he's gotten on there, and Blaise knows that it won't work.
"More aggressive, and quicker," Rudel tells him, his tone cheerful. "Don't worry. You'll get there."
They have killed a man this night. In fact, unless Blaise's count is off, they've killed seven, but only one death matters, only one death will see them paid.
Back at the inn where they've rented a room, there will be a hot bath, food and clean clothes waiting for them, and Blaise knows they should go back there now, not linger in the street, so close to the house where six men have died for no other reason than having the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but instead, he lets Rudel press him against a wall too dirty to show the blood in the morning, assuming anyone will bother looking for it.
Blaise doesn't think of himself as a man prone to the Arimondan vice. He's not the kind of man to look at other men and desire to have them the way a man might desire to have a woman.
"Let me have a look at your shoulder," Rudel says, and there's nothing in his tone to give away what has happened between them earlier, nothing that suggests he's about to propose they share the bed for anything other than sleep.
Blaise wonders if he's simply blind to it, as he's been blind to other things, before. "It's only a scratch."
They've both been trained too well to ignore even a scratch. Rudel's hands move on him, sure and slow, cleaning the wound before wrapping some cloth around it, and when Rudel is done and about to withdraw, Blaise prevents him, his smile as cocky and confident as he can make it.
"I think you owe me, for before."
Rudel's gaze shifts, sharpens, like a knife drawn from its sheath. "You didn't seem to mind at the time."
"I didn't," Blaise says. "I don't. I only want - "
"Ah," Rudel says. "Yes. Of course. The bed?"
Until he has Rudel bent over a desk, Rudel alternating between trying to locate a letter and ordering Blaise to stop with a distinct lack of conviction, Blaise doesn't realise it was a question, rather than the offer and agreement he took it to be.
It makes little enough difference, he supposes, given the result.
"This would have been a lot easier with some light and without you distracting me, you know," Rudel tells him, turning around, letter triumphantly clutched in one hand. "I know you're only here as a guest, but you could at least try to act like a professional, for my sake if not your own."
Blaise grins. "Shouldn't a true professional be able to deal with a little distraction?"
Rudel leans in for a kiss, which seems a mild reply, considering, but Blaise is willing enough to let things go, to stop the conversation in order to put their mouths to a different use - his mistake, he realizes, as Rudel bites his lip hard enough to leave Blaise tasting blood.
"A true professional does not put up with anyone questioning his skills," Rudel tells him, licking at his lips, while glancing at Blaise's. "You'd do well to remember that."
"Consider me reminded," Blaise says, wondering why he feels more turned on than put out at having Rudel ensure that for the next week, people will be looking at his mouth, making who knows what sort of assumptions about what's happened to him. Wondering, also, if he should respond in kind, to mark Rudel as Rudel has marked him.
"The wife wasn't supposed to be there."
Blaise feels unsettled, angry. It's only one more death - or would have been, if not for Rudel's quick thinking and the fact that they'd worn masks, making it highly unlikely she'd be able to recognize them.
He becomes aware that he's not being as gentle, as attentive as he could be, that to some degree, he's taking out on Rudel feelings he should rightfully take out on their employer.
"Could have been an accident," Rudel says. If Blaise is hurting him, he doesn't let it show.
"I - " Blaise wants to apologize. He also wants to put a knife to their employer's throat and get some honest answers - a near-impossibility, given that lying comes as naturally to Portezzans as breathing. Supposedly.
There are times when Blaise feels that people are more or less the same everywhere. It's only the details that differ, the flavor of injustice, the method of the deception.
"We'd need to return the money. It's considered polite," Rudel says.
Blaise wants to laugh. Trust the Portezzans to have rules of etiquette for how an assassin should go about turning against their employer.
"Though we could offer the widow our services. She might be interested - and she has recently come into possession of considerable funds, after all." Rudel's tone is casual, relaxed.
Blaise wonders if he's being reproached in some way. He feels a little embarrassed all of a sudden. "I'm sorry."
For a moment, he thinks it's not enough. It's not much, after all. Words.
Then Rudel asks: "How sorry?" and Blaise knows he's been forgiven after all.
"Not sorry enough to take the money and ignore the fact that he gave us false information."
Rudel makes a gesture suggesting that matter's already settled, as far as he's concerned. "I wasn't talking about that. I know what you're like. And besides, like I said, we might end up getting paid after all, so no harm done."
Blaise sighs, though part of him is relieved. "How do you want me?"
Rudel chuckles. "I'll tell you when you're done. Come on. Don't stop just when I was beginning to feel we were getting somewhere."
Blaise estimates there's about a dozen men after them. That would be less of a problem if there weren't another dozen men waiting from them in ambush.
"Typical." Rudel shakes his head. Blaise notes there's some blood on his face, and more on his shirt, his breeches. His shoes, too, probably, though that's harder to see. "See? This is what honor gets you."
"I think it may have been trying to get paid by the woman whose husband we killed."
"Bah. That's simply good business sense. My father would have disowned me if I'd passed up that opportunity."
"Your father doesn't know even half of what you get up to."
"Eh." Rudel shrugs. Blaise wonders if this means Rudel's father does, in fact, know all that his son gets up to. It shouldn't surprise him, he thinks. Not all families are like his own. Some fathers lover their sons.
"So how do you want to do this?" he asks.
"Making it out alive would be good, wouldn't it?" Rudel grins.
Blaise feels a sudden rush of desire. He realizes that he's almost sure that they're going to live through this already, that part of him is already looking forwards to being back at their room, both of them bloodied but alive, against all odds. "I suppose so, yes. Any ideas?"
"Killing them all would probably do the trick, don't you think? We'll figure out how to deal with their employers, after. Busy days ahead!"
"You're enjoying this." Blaise knows he is, too. It's still not like a proper fight in Gorhaut, where men wear armor and ride horses and swing swords instead of knives, but he's grown used to this, to Rudel's grins and shrugs and prickly professional pride.
"Actually, I just thought that in this special case, it'd be all right for us to keep the money after all."
Blaise laughs.
"I feel like I should buy you something."
"A new knife?" Blaise suggests. He's left one of his best ones in someone's body earlier this night. There wasn't time to get it back - or if there was, he judged it better used otherwise. "I could use one."
"Sometimes I forget what a barbarian you are. Here in Portezza, we know what bad luck it is to gift a man a knife, because it means fate will conspire to make him use it on you."
Blaise stretches, feeling comfortably sore. "So what you're saying is, I should gift one to you instead?"
Rudel stills beside him, then turns to face him with narrow eyes and a thoughtful, speculative expression on his face that makes Blaise feel he's almost managed to surprise Rudel this once.
"Well?" Blaise asks.