A snippet from A Sense of Murder. It’s one thing to push around an Imperial girl. It’s another thing entirely when the woman in question is a seer with a gift for prophecy, training from the Black House, and a background that gives her very few inhibitions against inflicting grievous bodily harm…
He froze for barely an instant, giving her time to reach up with both hands and grab his knife arm. She used her handhold to pull herself up. She raised her right leg and slammed her foot down on his instep.
Nissa must have caught it just right. She drove her boot heel into his foot with a sharp crack of bone. The thug howled in pain, loosening his hold on her. Nissa took immediate advantage, yanking his right arm down, sawing the edge of his own knife across his left forearm.
I missed exactly what happened next. I was distracted because I realized I could once again see a ghost-like emanation surrounding her, something eerily like a faint aura. So much so that I experienced a momentary burst of panic, thinking that I might have raised my Talent reflexively. I didn’t need to concentrate to see this effect on her, though; and it was faint enough that in other conditions, I would likely have missed it entirely. It didn’t so much envelop her. Instead, it seemed to precede her, as if it were a real being and she was nothing more than an ethereal shadow following along in its wake.
She hip-checked the thug at just the right moment. He stepped on a loose stone with his bad foot, losing his balance and falling face-forward to the street. She kept hold of his knife hand, following him down, shifting one hand to his elbow.
She didn’t so much put him in an arm bar, as move just so to let one just materialized under her hands, letting her drive the thug into the ground and beyond. The thug’s scream was muffled by the pavement as she bent his right arm bent in an unnatural way. His knife flew out of his hand, bounced wildly on the cobblestones—
—and landed perfectly in Nissa’s hand when she rose. She didn’t bother looking at it when she caught it, tossing it behind her in one smooth motion.
The thug on the ground was curled up, whimpering and sobbing in pain. Nissa pulled her foot back for a kick. I stepped between her and her target before she had a chance to shatter his already dislocated elbow.
“Enough.” I spoke softly. Nissa looked up at me without moving her head, panting, teeth clenched. A thin thread of blood ran down from her nose. She wiped the back of the hand across her face, smearing away the blood.
“You wouldn’t have done that if I had kept the knife.”
“No.”
“That’s why I threw it away.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. With that, whatever spirit gripped her vanished like mist in the morning sun.
“We really have underestimated you,” Prospero murmured. He came over to kneel down beside the thug. “That was an outstanding demonstration of instas praescientia.”
“It hurt.” Nissa said dully. She wiped away another thread of blood from her nose. “I should have seen him coming, too. The echoes of whatever it is in the Weave must be getting stronger. I should be able to keep something like that up for two or three minutes at a time, not just a few seconds.”
“Then it was doubly impressive.” Prospero reached out and nudged the thug. “Don’t you agree?”
Read more about Nissa, her Talent, and how in the world a seer could end up with a knife at her throat in A Sense of Murder, coming soon from Selene Press!