Tylar sheathed his dagger, grabbed with his other arm, then used his legs and the last of his strength to pull himself back up. He rolled onto the upper deck.
Freeing his dagger again, he searched the space.
Halfway across the deck, two shadowed figures were locked in a tumbled embrace, writhing in a hand-to-hand battle.
Kathryn . . .
A final wrench of shadows and the outcome became clear. Rising to his feet, Darjon ser Hightower clutched a fistful of Kathryn’s hair. He held her at his knees, head bent back, face bared. His sword lay at her throat.
“Move and she dies,” Darjon yelled to Tylar.
Behind the bastard, the door to the common room shook with pounding. But it was barred. There would be no rescue. Tylar stared at Kathryn. Her lower lip had been split. Blood ran from both nostrils. Still, a fierceness met his gaze. Don’t give in, she seemed to will him.
“What do you want?” Tylar asked.
“It was lucky you cracked that window. That sudden gust and bobble of the flippercraft saved my life. Your old witch here proved more skilled with a sword than I expected. But she’s not as skilled with a fist, alas. Easy to catch off guard.” He tightened his grip, his blade digging into her neck. Blood dribbled. “Now I want you to step over to that rail and fling yourself through that broken window. Do that and this sell-wench will live.”
“Why?” Tylar asked, needing time to think. “Whose justice do you serve?”
“My own,” Darjon snapped back.
Tylar shook his head. “To what end, then?”
A new fire flamed up in the man’s eyes, sensing he had the upper hand. He sneered, circling more slowly. “For too long, man has been subservient to the Hundred, but a new order rises, a new day. Power shall be returned to the people, to mankind! No longer will we be the playthings, the raw clay, of the gods. The Cabal will set us free. What was settled, will be unsettled. What was stolen, will be returned. What ended so long ago, starts anew.”
Tylar heard the cadence of fervor behind his words. “And the death of Meeryn?” he pressed, buying time.
“The first to fall. But she will not be the last! At long last, the War of the Gods is upon us.”
“And I’m to be the goat for this first kill. If you’re so proud of the death done in the Summering Isles, then why doesn’t the Cabal take credit for it?”
Darjon’s eyes narrowed, irritated. “The time is not yet right. Meeryn discovered the Cabal too soon. She had to be stopped. The naethryn assassin was called forth by one loyal to our cause. Not all gods wish to rule mankind. Some wish for our freedom. We work together—god and man—to free us both.”
Tylar recognized madness when it was bared so plainly.
Pounding continued behind them. The characteristic chop of an ax echoed. Could Tylar stall Darjon enough for the others to break through?
“No more talk,” Darjon said, as if reading his thoughts. “You have until the count of ten to hurl yourself over the railing, or I’ll kill this woman.”
“You made one mistake, Darjon,” Tylar said coldly.
“And what’s that?” he said with a sneer.
“You assumed I still have a fondness for this woman.”
The satisfied sneer faltered.
“This is the woman who damned me with her own testimony,” Tylar said, putting steel into his voice. “She broke her marital vow to me. She swore against me. Upon her words, I was broken on the wheel and sent into the slave circuses. She means nothing to me.”
“You lie.”
“Words are breath,” Tylar conceded. “But actions are flesh.” He turned the dagger in his hand and threw it with all the force in his arm.
Darjon shielded himself with a ward of shadowcloak, but the knight had not been Tylar’s intended target. The blade struck Kathryn in the hollow of her exposed throat, burying itself to the hilt. A killing strike.
The force of the blow threw her back. Darjon held her up by a fistful of hair. Kathryn’s eyes were wide with pain and shock. She gasped like a fish flopping on the bottom of a boat, soundless, yet agonized.
Darjon dropped her with disgust.
Tylar stood. He sidestepped to the first knight he had dispatched and collected the man’s abandoned sword.
Darjon billowed out his cloak, folding darkness into shield, drawing power and speed.
Tylar widened his stance. Blood flowed from the two impaled bolts. He tasted and smelled it with every agonized breath. He was no match for Darjon. Still, he lifted his sword.
“Let’s end this.”
Dart stepped from the carriage. Laurelle followed. Both girls kept behind Yaellin. He paid the coachman and spoke in low tones, menace and warning inflecting his quiet words. The man nodded and remounted his carriage seat. As the horses set off down the street, Yaellin’s cloak soaked up the shadows in the alleyway, stirring the darkness like water.
“Will he tell anyone about us?” Laurelle asked.
“Gold will quiet a tongue for only so long,” Yaellin said. “And fear of reprisal for aiding us may buy us another day. But I expect the bounty on the three of us will be high. The lure will draw him out. Before that happens, we must clear the upper city.”
Dart, like the others, had noted the number of castillion guards out on the street, easy to spot in their gold-and-crimson livery. They were knocking on doors and questioning every wagon. Their own carriage had taken this alley to avoid a patrol. Chrism would soon have every garrison alerted from one end of Chrismferry to the other.
“What now?” she asked. Her eyes stared at the two towers of the Conclave. Yaellin had them dropped off several streets from its doors.
“We go on foot. We move swiftly. We stick to shadows.”
Yaellin drew them across the street and down an alley. Dart ran to keep up. She still ached deep in her belly, her head raced with a thousand questions, and her heart pounded in terror and worry. She wanted to lie down, cover her face, and cry. But Yaellin’s earlier words kept her moving.
And you, little Dart, may be the key all seek.
She prayed it wasn’t so.
And what of Pupp? Where was he? He must be terrified, all alone. Was he suffering from their separation, too? Love for him welled through her, gave her some strength to continue running. The three of them, while heading toward the Conclave, were also moving in the direction of the walled Eldergarden. Each step helped steady her. She would find Pupp. He had protected her at her most dire moment. She could do no less for him, regardless of the risk.
They fled down another street, staying on the shadowed side. Gates to the Conclave lay around the next corner and down a block. “Not much farther,” Yaellin promised them.
The pound of boot steps on cobbles sounded from ahead. The churlish voice of a captain reached them. “Check every doorway, every home, every stall.”
Yaellin searched around them. The street offered no hiding place. “Back,” he said with hushed urgency.
Dart turned around. The closest alley lay too far away. They’d never escape in time.
“Hurry,” Yaellin urged.
“No,” Laurelle said. “This way.”
She ran ahead, toward the nearby corner, toward the approaching guards. Dart hesitated, then raced after Laurelle. She had lost one friend this morning. She’d not lose another.
Yaellin followed with a grumble.
Laurelle reached a shop at the corner and ducked inside. Dart knew the establishment. A wooden rolling pin hung above the lintel. It was Havershym’s Bakery and Sweets. Girls and boys had been coming here for generations to buy or pinch bits of brittlesyrup, gingersnaps, or honeycakes. Laurelle was seldom without a bag of sweets from the shop, passing them out to her dearest friends.
Dart had never been the recipient of such largesse. In fact, she had been in the shop only once, when she was awarded two brass pinches for helping Mistress Grannice spin some raw wool. She had bought four pieces of karamellow, doling them out as a treat to herself once
a month.
The brass bell rang as they rushed inside. The smell of sugar and rising bread filled their noses. The heat from the fired ovens in the back room warmed the chill of the streets off them.
The portly baker, Havershym himself, yelled from the back. “Bread’s a-baking. Hold fast. I’ll be up in a breath.” Dart caught a glimpse of his backside as he bent with a long wooden bread peel. The knock and block of pans and utensils echoed from farther back, apprentices mixing and kneading. Laughter chimed out.
Laurelle did not stop. She ducked under the counter and ran past the short rows of sweets and alongside the steaming baskets of loafed breads. She reached a low, narrow door and pushed inside.
“Quickly,” she said.
The space was filled with barrels of dry flour and casks of rock sugar. Bags hung from the rafters on iron hooks, smelling of seed and yeast.
Laurelle stooped under the bags and hurried toward the back door. She yanked it open. A dark alley lay beyond it. Dart and Yaellin caught up with Laurelle, and they headed down the alley to where it crossed with another. Dart suddenly knew where she was. She stared up. The towers of the Conclave climbed into the morning sky. They were in the back alley behind the school’s courtyard.
Yaellin had the same realization. “We’re here.”
Dart glanced to Laurelle.
Her friend shrugged. “I spent so much time going to and from the shop, spending fistfuls of coin, that Havershym eventually allowed me to shorten my steps by using his back door. And I knew at this hour they’d still be busy with their ovens. If we moved swiftly enough, we could pass through their shop unseen.”
They approached the back gate to the school’s courtyard. Mostly used by carts and wagons to deliver goods, seldom did anyone give it any attention.
“Keep with me,” Yaellin said as they neared the ironwork gate. He swept out his cloak and helped hide the girls. “Surely Chrism has sent ravens throughout the city to warn all to watch for us. He wouldn’t have neglected the Conclave.”
“Then where are we to go?” Dart asked.
“To whom we were called to meet. We’ll hole up there until the others arrive.”
“Hole up where?” Dart pressed.
Yaellin nodded to the open gate, sweeping shadows over Dart’s head like gigantic raven’s wings. “With Healer Paltry.”
Tylar waited for Darjon. The knight circled him, clearly suspicious. Or perhaps the knight was simply allowing Tylar to weaken further from his wounds.
Pounding and chopping continued at the door to the flippercraft’s common room. Such ships were built of stubborn stoutoak and ironwood. Rescue would not be swift.
“Why don’t you call your daemon?” Darjon taunted. “Or has it abandoned you?”
Tylar glowered. Darjon clearly had intended to dispatch him in the initial attack. He had been surprised by Kathryn’s skill. And now he was wondering why Tylar hadn’t summoned his daemon. Darjon’s eyes sparked brighter, more confident.
Tylar stepped around, matching Darjon’s dance, one circling the other. “Why forsake your cloak?” Tylar called out. “Why join the Cabal?”
Darjon kept his sword steady but slipped his masklin free with the point of his dagger. He exposed his pale features.
“It was a god’s blood that did this to me,” he spat. “I was to be a soothmancer, but the blessing went awry. It turned my skin at birth so pale that the sun burns with the slightest touch. It can hold no pigment, not even the tattoos of knighthood.”
Tylar stared into those red eyes. He saw as much madness as Grace in that glow.
“Yet still, I sought to serve Myrillia honorably,” Darjon continued, circling with cautious steps. “I trained hard and earned my right to don a shadowcloak. I was distinguished among my peers. But who would have a disfigured knight? One without stripes?” His voice hardened. “They placed me far from all else. In a god-realm of burning sunlight and eternally clear skies, where I dared never to shed my cloak lest my skin be burned or my eyes blinded. The day was forbidden me. Such a cruel assignment was as much a curse as my birth.”
“We go where we are needed,” Tylar said. “We serve who we must. That’s a knight’s duty.”
“And such a condition is no better than slavery. I’m sure you of all people could understand that. Imagine being confined not to a cell or circus, like you were, but imprisoned in one’s own cloak, forever unable to escape its shelter.” He shook his sword at Tylar. “When the Cabal approached me, told me of another way to live, free of gods and enslavement to duty, I knew their cause was just. The Hundred have ruled for far too long. Now is the time for the rule of man.”
Tylar had heard similar complaints in the past. “The Hundred do not rule us. They share their Graces. We honor their duty by offering service to them. It is through their humours that Myrillia has dragged itself out of barbarism and into a time of peace and prosperity. Men are free to live their own lives.”
“And swine are just as free to rut and roll in the mud,” Darjon said. “Blind and oblivious to the killing floor to come.”
Tylar sighed. It was time to end this. He lifted his sword. “The Cabal will be stopped. We will find its head and chop it off.”
Laughter, harsh and cruel, answered him. “The Cabal is legion. It thrives everywhere. Cut once and thrice will you be struck down. Like so . . .”
Darjon leaped at him.
Caught by surprise, Tylar stumbled back. He parried the knight’s first thrust by brute force, feinted with his shoulders, and attempted a slice to the man’s arm. But his blade found only shadow.
From out of a fold of cloak, a dagger stabbed at Tylar’s side. He could not avoid it, only lessen the injury. He met the dagger with his arm, catching the blade’s point with his forearm. The knife cut to bone.
Tylar twisted away, falling backward. He fled a few staggering steps until he was forced once again against the rail. Winds from the shattered window below rushed against his backside, threatening to buffet him forward onto Darjon’s blade.
The knight closed upon him.
Enough . . .
Tylar had heard all he needed to hear. He nodded past Darjon’s shoulder.
At his signal, a flow of shadow whisked up. A flash of silver broke through the dark cloud. A sword lanced out and struck Darjon in the shoulder, piercing fully through.
Darjon glanced down in surprise. Before he could react further, the blade was yanked back out, unsheathed from his body. Released, he spun to face his attacker, half-falling.
Kathryn shed her cloak, revealing herself alive and unharmed.
“How . . . ?” Darjon mumbled.
Kathryn cocked back her free arm and struck the man in the teeth with a fist wrapped around a dagger’s hilt. Darjon fell backward, hitting the rail hard and going down on one knee.
“I can fight with fist as well as sword,” she said fiercely and kicked out with a heel. “Not to mention leg.”
Caught in the chin, his head snapped back, then forward. He fell to his hands. Tylar held his sword to the man’s neck. He supported himself on the rail with his other arm.
“The game is over, Darjon,” Tylar said. “While you never were blessed as a soothmancer, others were. You will be exposed. As will your Cabal allies.”
Darjon lifted his face to Tylar. “Myrillia will be free!” A fold of shadowcloak parted. Something dropped into the man’s palm as he sat back.
Tylar pressed his sword into the man’s neck, but he was too late. Darjon crushed the thin crystal vial against the floorboards under his palm. The tinkle of glass sounded.
Tylar kicked the man in the side, rolling him over. Kathryn guarded him with her sword.
Darjon held up a hand, showing Tylar his bloody palm, pierced by glass. “The Cabal lives!”
The man’s palm and fingers melted to slag, losing all form, like warmed wax. The curse spread quickly, down the arm, over the shoulder and neck. The left side of Darjon’s face drooped and sagged. His eye rolled d
own his flowing cheek.
Tylar and Kathryn both backed a step, fearful of the curse leaping to them. Darjon, still of some mind, took advantage. A snap of shadowcloak whipped out, snagged the rail, and contracted, yanking Darjon off the boards and over the rail.
Tylar lunged at him, striking the railing hard. One of the crossbow bolts snapped. A rib, grazed by the bolt, cracked with a flare of agony.
No . . .
Below, Darjon plummeted through window, tumbling past the belly of the flippercraft. Still wrapped in his shadowcloak, darkness shredded from his form, burned away by the brightness of the morning.
Tylar shoved backward, clutching his side. Darjon was no longer a concern.
“Tylar . . . ?” Kathryn came toward him.
“Get back!” he yelled.
Agony flared outward from the snapped rib. Bones broke and broke again: wrist, elbow, fingers. He crashed to the floor as both legs shattered under him. He writhed on the floor for two breaths.
The beast inside shook free of its broken cage, rising from his chest, burning through his shirt and cloak, a fountain of smoky darkness. It fled from his form, stirring and drawing the bones together in its wake, healing with callus and spur.
He saw the look of horror on Kathryn’s face. He lifted a crooked arm toward her. The horror on her face deepened as she stumbled farther away.
Above him, the font of darkness spread its wings. Its shadow-maned head snaked outward. Flaming eyes opened, seeking the danger for which it had been summoned. It found only one target.
Kathryn continued her startled retreat.
The naethryn lunged at her, wings sweeping wide, eyes blazing.
Tylar had to stop it. He smeared his hands on his blood-soaked shirt and grabbed hold of the smoky umbilicus that linked the daemon to the black print on his chest. The Grace in his blood ignited like fire on contact. The cord throbbed and twisted under his fingers. Flames of Grace spread out over it, as swift as flowing water.