The goldwine in Daniio’s cellars wasn’t what you’d call the finest vintage. Truthfully it was closer to paint thinner than whiskey. Unbeknownst to any of his customers, Daniio used it to clean the pots once a year and they always came up sparkling. But, wonderful thing about spirits, no matter how low-rent the production or gods-awful the taste.
They burn beautifully.
Smoke was already rising from the Old Imperial’s roof as Mia reached the garrison tower, sneaking around back of the stables and up to the rear wall. The tower rose thirty feet high, and there were no windows on the upper levels—she was almost certain that’s where the Ministry and Lord Cassius would be. She supposed they were in the same state they’d been in during the journey from the Mountain, gagged and chained up tight, but she needed to see for sure. She was horribly outnumbered, and didn’t know the lay of the land. Burning most of Remus’s troops alive to cause a distraction had seemed a good way to kill two birds with one stone.
Or sixty, as the case may be.
Truthfully, she’d not even known if the Swoon would dissolve in Daniio’s broth, but giving it a try seemed a better idea than just marching into the Imperial and flinging handfuls of wyrdglass around. The stink of burning flesh hung heavy on the winds, smoke rising in a twisting column to the sunburned sky, but if she felt any guilt about the fate she’d gifted the Luminatii, it was quickly quashed at the thought of Tric and the others who’d died in the Mountain’s belly.
She’d scaled halfway up the watchtower wall when the legionary atop it sounded the alarm, banging on a heavy brass bell and roaring, “Fire! Fire!” Last Hope’s townsfolk burst from their doors, Centurion Garibaldi stumbled into the street and cursed, and Mia slipped up over the battlements and slit the lookout’s throat, ear to bloody ear.
Throwing on her shadows, she flipped the trapdoor in the floor open before his body had hit the floor. Dropping onto the upper level, she found bunk beds, wardrobes and a single, groggy legionary rising from his mattress to see what the fuss was about. Her gladius put him back to bed, and she covered his face with bloody blankets, whispering a prayer to Niah. Slipping down the stairs onto the level below, she breathed a soft curse to find it empty, along with the commonroom beneath. Peering through the ground-floor windows, she could see four legionaries posted outside the front door—Remus and Garibaldi and the rest seemed to be down at the Imperial. With only one place left to look, Mia opened the cellar door and stole down into the dark.
Two arkemical globes cast a thin glow across wine barrels and shelves, wooden pillars and huddled figures. Three Luminatii were sitting about an upturned crate, grousing on a deck of cards. All three looked up as she entered. It was far too dark to see beneath her cloak down here, so she threw it aside, tossed one of her few remaining globes of onyx wyrdglass. Black smoke burst in the center of the card table, beggars and brews flying, Mia dropping down the stairs with her swords drawn, lashing out at the nearest man without a whisper.
Though the light was dim, she could still feel their shadows, reaching out and fixing their boots to the floor, one by one. The lead soldier fought hard despite his surprise, cursing her for a heretic, promising she’d meet her dark mother soon. But for all his bluster, he fell with her sword in his belly, clutching his punctured chainmail and calling for his own ma, his blood red on the stone. Mia hurled a fistful of throwing knives at the second man, two blades striking home and sending him to the floor. The third tried to run, tugging at his boots and fumbling with the buckles as she rose up behind him and buried her sword between his ribs, the blade rupturing his mail shirt and punching out through his chest. He fell without a sound, eyes open and accusing.
Mia pushed them closed with another whispered prayer.
Through the swirling smoke, the stink of blood, she saw them. Seven figures, trussed up in a corner. Shahiid Aalea, bound and gagged. Spiderkiller, bruised and unconscious. Solis, beaten to within an inch of his life, his face a mass of purple welts. Hush, Mouser and Drusilla, all awake, mouths gagged. And at the last, Cassius, dark eyes glowering, filled with pain. The Black Prince. Lord of Blades. Looking at him, Mia felt that same queasy sensation she’d felt when they’d met in the past. Sickness. Vertigo. Fear. It was almost painful. A dark shape coalesced beside him, black fangs bared in a snarl.
Eclipse.
The shadowwolf stepped toward Mia, hackles raised. Mister Kindly puffed up in her shadow, yowling and spitting. The creatures stared each other down as Mia hissed.
“Put it back in your pants, the pair of you.”
“… FOOL CHILD, I WEAR NO PANTS…”
“… o, you’d be the brains of the outfit, then…”
Mister Kindly, enough.”
The not-cat fell into a sullen silence, and a glance from Lord Cassius was enough to make Eclipse do the same. Crouching beside the Ministry, Mia cut away Mother Drusilla’s gag, pulled it from the old woman’s mouth.
“Acolyte Mia,” she whispered. “A pleasant … surprise indeed.”
Mia set about cutting away Mouser and Aalea’s gags, and, lastly, Lord Cassius. The man looked like he’d been used as a training dummy, lips swollen, eyes blackened, cheek split. But even with his gag removed, the Lord of Blades said nothing at all.
Mia tried to ignore the sickness swelling in the man’s presence, the thunder of her heart against her ribs. She looked over the manacles, the ropes binding each, started sawing at Cassius’s bonds with her gravebone blade.
“I have to get you out of here,” Mia whispered. “I’ve distracted them, but not for long. Can you walk? Better yet, run?”
“The Luminatii obviously intended to bring us in alive,” Drusilla wheezed. “But Solis is in a state, and after Mouser slipped his bonds yesterturn, the good justicus ensured he’d be running nowhere for a while.”
Mia looked the Shahiid of Pockets over, noticed the odd angle of his shins.
“Black Mother,” she whispered. “He’s broken your legs.”
“And fingers.” Mouser winced. “Rather … unsporting, I thought.”
Mia cut their ropes, but the garrison’s manacles were a trickier proposition. They were heavy iron, locked by a key that none of the three soldiers she’d just ended seemed to possess. Each of the Ministry were chained at wrists and ankles, and would only be able to manage a shuffling walk unless they were freed.
“Shit,” she breathed. “I’ve got no picks on me.”
“In my boots,” Mouser whispered with a ghost of a smile. “Left heel.”
Mia cracked Mouser’s boot heel as he bid her, murmured apology as his shin shifted and he hissed in pain. Inside, she found a few picks and small torsion bar, set to work on Cassius’s bonds. Beaten as he was, the Lord of Blades would still be able to carry Solis, and between Aalea, Spiderkiller and Hush, they’d manage Mouser. The question was should they tuck tail and run, or stand and fight? Solis and Mouser were in no shape to ride, and she’d no chance of saddling up the camel train without the Luminatii noticing. But in a toe-to-toe against a dozen men armed with sunsteel? Any minute now one of them might be back to here to check on—
“’Byss and blood…”
Mia looked over her shoulder at the whisper, saw a figure at the top of the cellar stairs. Dusty boots. Daggers at her belt. Blond warbraids. Wide blue eyes.
“Ashlinn…”
Mia stretched out her arm, groping for the shadow at the girl’s feet. But without a word the girl spun and sprang back up the stairs, out of sight, her boots skipping light across the boards above their heads as she dashed toward the tower door.
“Shit, she’s going to warn them…”
Mia tossed the picks into Cassius’s lap, scrambled to her feet and bolted after Ashlinn. Taking the stairs three apiece, up into the sunslight just in time to see the four Luminatii stationed on the garrison house door burst through it, Ashlinn beating a dusty trail down the street to the Old Imperial, shouting as she went.
The Luminatii were local lads, and unlike the re
fugees from the raid, all armed with their sunsteel. Though covered in dust from the wastes, they were also wearing plate armor, the plumes on their helms a dirty red. They drew their blades with a shout, the steel bursting into flame as they barreled into the room. Close quarters. Heavily armed and armored opponents. No element of surprise and swords that would cut through her like good-looking butter.
Mia didn’t like those odds.
She tossed the last of her onyx wyrdglass onto the floor, turned and dashed up the stairs. Coughing and sputtering through the thick haze, the Luminatii charged after her, roaring at her to halt. Mia hurled a fistful of ruby wyrdglass as she bolted up to the third level, the globes popping on the lead Luminatii’s chest and splashing pieces of him across the room. Scorched and sprayed in blood, the remaining three proceeded with more caution, huddled behind their shields as they reached the third level. The last of Mia’s wyrdglass melted their shields to slag, the last of her throwing knives took the point man in the throat and sent him to his knees, clutching his severed jugular. Mia glanced at the rope ladder leading up to the roof, wondering if she could make it before the remaining two soldiers cut her down. Reaching out instead to the men’s shadows creeping along the floor …
The Luminatii bringing up the rear fell with a shocked expression, four feet of unlit sunsteel splitting his head almost in two. Brains and blood spattered the walls as the body toppled forward and spilled its last all over the floor. Lord Cassius rose up behind him, face swollen and bruised, dark eyes narrowed in a cold fury. And as Mia watched in awe, Cassius curled the fingers on his left hand and the shadows in the room sprang to life, writhing like serpents before the charmer. With a wave, the Lord of Blades tore the final legionary’s sword from his grip, and without a sound, swung the sunsteel longsword hard at the soldier’s neck.
Despite what your poets might say, gentlefriend, it takes a mighty swing and an even mightier arm to decapitate a man clean. And the Lord of Blades obviously wasn’t at his best. Still, there was only a ragged strip of flesh and a few splinters of shattered bone nailing the Luminatii’s head to his neck as he toppled and fell, his body twitching on the floor until it realized the sad truth that it was dead.
Mia glanced at the shadows, swaying at Cassius’s beck and call. She still felt that painful, oily sickness in her belly, Mister Kindly trembling at her feet.
“Nice trick,” she said.
“Trick?” The Lord of Blades raised an eyebrow. “Is that what you name it?”
“When I met you in Godsgrave … when you’re near me…” Mia shook her head. “Do you feel the way I do when we’re close? Sick? Frightened?”
Cassius waited a long moment before he replied.
“I feel hungry.”
Mia nodded. Her mouth dry. “Do you know why?”
The Lord of Blades looked pointedly at the corpses on the floor. The walls around them. “Perhaps here is not the best place to speak of it?”
“You owe me answers,” Mia said. “I think I’ve earned them by now.”
As if summoned, Eclipse materialized near Cassius’s feet. Mister Kindly hissed softly as the shadowwolf spoke, her voice seeming to come from beneath the floor.
“… THEY COME, CASSIUS. THE LIGHTBRINGER AND HIS MINIONS…”
The Lord of Blades looked at Mia. Nodded downstairs.
“Come,” Cassius said. “Let’s be rid of these curs. I will gift you what answers I have after initiation.”
“Initiation?” Mia frowned. “But I failed the final trial.”
A thin smile curled Cassius’s lips. “Your final trial awaits downstairs, little sister.”
“… Sister?”
Cassius was already gone, stealing down the stairs without a sound. Mia hurried after him, for all her training feeling like a stumbling drunkard. Even beaten bloody, tortured and starved, Cassius moved like a shadow. His boots made no sound on the stone. His every motion precise, nothing wasted, no flash or showmanship. His hair flowing out behind him as if the breeze were blowing, stolen sword gleaming in his hand as he pushed open the front door and stepped into the street.
A dozen Luminatii were waiting. Centurion Garibaldi, squinting at Mia with vague recognition. A handful of heavily armed legionaries, sunsteel burning in their hands. Justicus Remus, a scarred, hulking mountain of a man in his gravebone armor, looking at Cassius with narrowed, wolfish eyes. And behind Remus, staring at Mia with something between hate and admiration …
“Ashlinn,” Mia whispered.
Remus stepped forward, sword raised and rippling with flame. He’d been a giant when Mia last saw him in the sunslight, just ten years old and clinging to her mother’s skirts. Now, he seemed just a little older. A little smaller.
But only a little.
“I’ve no wish to slay you, heretic,” the justicus growled.
“That makes one of us,” Mia spat.
Remus raised an eyebrow, as if surprised to learn the girl had a tongue. Cassius glanced sideways at Mia, spoke from the corner of his mouth.
“I believe he was talking to me.”
“I believe I couldn’t give a shit.” Mia turned to Remus, flipping her sword back and forth between hands. “Nice to see you again, Justicus. Did the traitorous bitch beside you tell you who I am?”
Remus glanced at Ashlinn, looked Mia up and down with a sneer. “I know who you are, girl. And it surprises me not one whit to see your lot thrown in with a den of heretics and murderers. The apple never falls far from the tree.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed, hair blowing about her face as the wind began to rise. The Luminatii looked to their feet, quavering a little as they realized their shadows were ebbing and pulsing, reaching out to the girl as if they longed to touch her.
“You hung my father as entertainment for a fucking mob,” she spat. “Threw my mother in a hole with no sunslight and let madness eat her. My brother was just a baby, and you let him die in the dark. And you talk to me about murder?”
Mia’s eyes were welling with tears, face twisted in rage.
“Every nevernight since I was ten years old, I’ve dreamed of killing you. You and Scaeva and Duomo. I gave up everything. Any chance I ever had of ever being happy. Every turn, I’d picture your face and imagine all the things I’d say to let you know just how much I hate you. It’s all I am anymore. It’s all that’s left inside me. You killed me, Remus. Just as sure as you killed my familia.”
Mia raised her sword, leveled it at Remus’s head.
“And now, I’m going to kill you.”
Remus snarled to the men beside him. “End the girl. Bring me Cassius alive.”
To their credit, an order to capture the deadliest man in the Itreyan Republic alive didn’t stagger the men much. Perhaps prefacing the command with the murder of a sixteen-year-old girl made it easier to swallow. Ashlinn hung back, but the legionaries—a dozen in all—stepped forward, Centurion Garibaldi at the forefront. With prayers to Aa and pleas for strength from the Everseeing Light, they raised their shields and charged. And without a sound, the Lord of Blades stepped up to meet them.
Mia had seen some fighters who moved like dancers, lithe and graceful. Others moved like bulls, all brawn and bluster. But Cassius moved like a knife. Simple. Straight. Deadly. There was no flash to his style. No flair. He simply cut right to the bone. The shadows rose at his call, and, with a wave of his hand, he disarmed the first legionary to meet him, buried his blade in the man’s chest. The second fell flat on his belly, his charge tripped up by a snarl of shadows. Cassius dispatched him with a quick blow to the back of his neck, almost as an afterthought.
Mia was astonished how easily the man wielded the dark. Out here, even in the light of a single sun, a second almost rising, she was hard pressed to even hold up a few of the charging legionaries. But still, she managed to fix the boots of two of the bigger fellows to the floor, hurled the last of her ruby wyrdglass into another’s face, blowing his head clean off his shoulders. A burning sword sliced the air, hissing
as it came. Mia bent backward, feeling the heat on her chin. She rolled into a crouch, somersaulting across the dust and hurling her last throwing knife in reply. It thudded quivering into the Luminatii’s neck, left him gushing and choking on the ground.
Mia rose from the dust. Eyes on Ashlinn. The pair faced each other across the shifting sands, the ghosts of two murdered boys hanging in the air between them. Tric. Osrik. Both unanswered. But for some reason Ashlinn hung back, loitering on the edge of the melee as more Luminatii charged at Mia, swords raised.
“You scared of me, Ash?”
Parry. Feint. Lunge.
“I didn’t want it to be like this, Mia,” the girl called. “I said you didn’t belong here.”
“Never picked you for a coward. Your brother put up more of a fight.”
“Trying to goad me into a little toe-to-toe?” Ash shook her head sadly. “Think that’s how this ends, love? Me stumbling into a swordfight I can’t win?”
“A girl can dream.”
“Keep dreaming, then. I studied under Aalea too.”
Mia parried a blow aimed at her throat, kicked a toeful of dirt into her attacker’s eyes. The man clobbered her with his shield, sent her sprawling in the dust. She slipped aside as his burning sword crashed into the sand beside her head, kicking savagely at the man’s knee. She heard a wet crunch, a strangled scream. Scrambling to her feet, all of Naev’s lessons singing in her head. Flaming steel cleaving the air, dust caked on her tongue.
Risking a glance, she saw Cassius was every bit the bladesman his reputation suggested. The dirt around him was littered with half a dozen corpses, another two men lying wounded and groaning in the dirt. Typical of most generals, Remus had hung back to let his foot soldiers do the fighting, but with his men falling like leaves, the man spat in the dust and waded into the fray. The Lord of Blades fell back, feinting with his shadows, the darkness flickering in the face of Remus’s burning blade.
With the dogpile on Cassius, Mia was left fighting a single opponent—Centurion Garibaldi. The man was relentless, battering away with his shield and landing blow after blow atop Mia’s guard. Mia was swift, but the man was heavily armored, and she found the few blows she managed to land turned aside by his plate. Garibaldi slammed his shield into her chest, sent her flying. She rolled away in time to miss having her head split open, scrambling up into a crouch and flinging her last globe of onyx wyrdglass onto Garibaldi’s shield. The arkemical glass burst, throwing up a swirling cloud of black smoke. The centurion staggered, coughing, and summoning up the last of her strength, Mia clenched her fists and took hold of the shadow at the centurion’s feet, tangling his boots as he charged again. The man teetered, arms pinwheeling as he fought for balance, losing at last. Garibaldi fell forward, his heels still stuck fast to the road, his shins snapping clean through as his weight brought the rest of him to the ground.