"Restrain her," Bol told Cheryl.
Then he moved. His body blurred across the narrow gap between himself and Zorak, and a narrow blade appeared in his hand from inside his jacket, old-looking but sharp. He went for the neck. Zorak didn't matter to them; the woman was the one they wanted.
CLANG!
Zorak had met the blade with his golden brass knuckles, and the sound echoed down the hallway. The hallway outside 3B was barely wide enough for two men, with the wall at Bol's shoulder and the open doorframe at Zorak's back, and Bol made the most of it. His strikes came in rapid succession, slashing, thrusting and feinting, short and tight so the wall never caught his elbow, every one aimed at a vital point. Zorak blocked at the neck, then the heart, then the throat again, the blade scraping along brass and throwing sparks in the dim hallway.
Bol twisted low for the ribs; Zorak pivoted and slammed his knuckles into the flat of the dagger, knocking it wide. Bol spun with the momentum and slashed upward at Zorak's jaw, and Zorak leaned back so the blade missed by inches. Then Zorak did something Bol didn't expect. He gave ground, one step back through the doorway, and let the next slash come. Bol's blade swept in at shoulder height and bit deep into the wooden doorframe, and for half a second it stuck. Zorak's fist was already moving. It slammed into Bol's chest and drove him back into the hallway wall, and plaster cracked behind him. Bol tore the dagger free and whipped it back toward Zorak's exposed flank, and brass met steel again, the impact shuddering through both men's arms.
When the fighting started, Cheryl darted toward Zuri. Restrain her. Boring, she thought. Blood was what she wanted. But they needed the woman alive for the information.
When Zuri saw her coming, she panicked. As a Seer, her spiritual energy gave her some strength, but she was no match for a warrior practitioner. She fled to her table and grabbed something from beneath it, a protection charm she had once bought at the Night Market. Pressing herself against the wall, she poured most of her spiritual energy into it and threw it down in front of her, then closed her eyes and sank into deep meditation.
The air shifted. The room dimmed, not into darkness but into something muted, as if the color had been drained halfway out of it. The particles in the air began to shimmer, twisting and bending and flickering in and out of focus. The edges of the furniture blurred, and the candles wavered without any wind. Zuri was still there against the wall, her chest rising and falling and her eyes closed, and yet it was as if she weren't.
Cheryl reached out, and her hand passed straight through Zuri's shoulder with no contact and no resistance, nothing but air.
"Oh!" Cheryl giggled. "You even have one of these. Interesting." She tilted her head and studied Zuri like a curious child. "Such things turning up here. A Phase Veil Charm."
The charm worked by shifting its bearer slightly out of the world's dominant physical frequency. It didn't move Zuri anywhere; it desynchronized the layer she interacted with. She still occupied the same space and could still see and hear, a faint shimmer where her body should be, but she couldn't be touched and couldn't touch solid matter.
All matter vibrated at a foundational harmonic frequency, and the charm shifted its user's resonant phase into an adjacent harmonic layer of reality, like two radio stations sharing the same air without ever colliding, or two dancers in the same room moving to completely different tempos. Since touch required harmonic alignment, physical contact became impossible. She was there, but not here. Her atoms were singing the wrong song.
Cheryl crouched and smiled. "There are ways around this," she said softly.
Matching her frequency to Zuri's wasn't impossible, just troublesome. Everything in existence vibrated at countless frequencies at once; the Veil itself was built on that principle, and The Deep worked in layers of resonance. Finding the right one was the trick. And the charm couldn't hold for long, which Zuri knew; she was betting everything on Zorak finishing first. Cheryl hummed to herself and closed her eyes, her fingers twitching as faint, erratic energy rippled around her, and began tuning herself to Zuri's layer.
Out in the hallway, the exchange went on, a rapid, technical rain of blows, blade against brass in a deadly dance across the narrow space. Bol shifted his weight and feinted left. Zorak didn't fall for it; he stepped inside Bol's guard and drove his knuckles at Bol's ribs, and Bol twisted aside and slashed upward. The blade caught Zorak's forearm and opened a thin red line across the skin.
Zorak didn't flinch. He caught Bol's wrist with his free hand, yanked him forward and drove a knee into his stomach, and the air burst out of Bol's lungs. Zorak spun him around, lifted him clean off the ground with both hands and hurled him across the room.
Bol flew through the air and crashed into Cheryl, and the two of them hit the floor in a tangle of limbs.