Empress of Rogues

by Carrie Summers

  Myrrh just shakes her head. Sixes.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “OKAY, THERE THEY are,” Hawk says in a low voice.

  Myrrh nods, sending a fresh shower of hay fragments down the back of her neck. She grits her teeth to quell the need to scratch—too much movement will give away their hiding spot.

  The cart is parked opposite the inn with Breeze perched on the bench seat. Occasionally, the woman stands halfway up and peers down the street as if checking the status at the docks. Just a simple farmer waiting to ship a load of hay up or downriver, or so Myrrh hopes the cart appears.

  With her fingertips, she widens the little hole in the hay through which she’s peering and spots the pair of smugglers, the talkative one with the auburn hair and his silent and surly companion, returning to the inn’s common room.

  Myrrh traces the sign of the Queen of Nines against her thigh, hoping the Lady will grant some kind of boon—if she exists anyway. Far from simply shrouding the western horizon, the clouds have now moved in so that the entire sky is blanketed, the light murky and wet. In these conditions, sunset will be nothing more than a slow gray transition to darkness. Nab must surely see that too, so Myrrh hopes that he’ll find a way to send a message and a revised plan through the same pair of smugglers.

  When the two men reach the small front porch of the inn, the one with the auburn hair steps forward to take the lead. Despite being so unsettled earlier, he shows no sign of nervousness now. Myrrh makes a mental note to offer him a good position in whatever organization she creates from the current chaos in Ostgard. As he reaches for the door handle, the door abruptly opens, causing him to jump back with a yelp of surprise.

  A Nightblade appears in the doorway, arms folded across a broad chest. Auburn-hair ducks his head and touches his brow and tries to step around Silver’s fighter. “Pardon, sire,” he says.

  “Tavern’s closed,” the Nightblade says.

  Auburn-hair shuffles. “Excuse me?”

  “This tavern is closed. The barkeep is serving hotel guests only tonight.”

  The smuggler hesitates for a moment, then nods. “We was hoping to rent a room anyway. The barge we was supposed to work tonight got held up downriver, leaving us with no berth or bunk.”

  Again, he tries to step past the Nightblade, but the imposing rogue snaps out a hand, planting it on the doorjamb and blocking the smugglers’ path. “The rooms are already rented for the night. I suggest you move on.” His hand strays toward the sheathed dagger on his belt to accentuate the statement. Myrrh winces as, undaunted, Auburn-hair makes an act of trying to peer around the Nightblade’s body.

  “Perhaps I could speak to the innkeeper instead of a patron? You don’t exactly have the look of someone who would content himself to run a riverside boarding establishment.”

  “Last chance,” the Nightblade says. “Move along.”

  “Oy!” Breeze calls from the wagon seat. “Methinks it would be best ye leave the fellow to his pints. He says the inn’s closed, and he’s got a look about him that suggests you would be wise to listen.”

  Myrrh breathes a sigh of relief, hoping the pair will heed their leader. Talking their way past a Nightblade wasn’t part of the plan.

  “We just want a pint or two,” the surly smuggler says, turning to face Breeze. Seeming to have grasped Breeze’s hint, Auburn-hair shoots out a hand to quiet him. But the Nightblade’s eyes have already narrowed.

  “You know, I thought it was strange, you being so determined to get in here. And now I remember why you look so familiar. You were here this morning. Seemed to be paying quite a lot of attention to business you ought not be interfering in.”

  Auburn-hair takes a step back, but the Nightblade’s hands are already up, and he flashes his fingers through a cantrip. Myrrh spots, in the dark of the inn behind him, the flash of a blade as someone else advances to help.

  When the Nightblade finishes the cantrip, Auburn-hair and his companion go stiff and staring, and neither flinches as the second of Silver’s people steps forward with a gleaming dagger in hand and a feral grin on his face.

  “Sunset or not, we’re going in now,” Myrrh says as she stands from the hay. “Go! Now! And don’t look at their hands.”

  Immediately, the street fills with the sound of breaking glass and splintering wood. Across the front of the inn, windows shatter inward, broken by the unseen hands of the nearly invisible Knives. Inside one of the windows, a latch moves as if by divine force, and the broken pane slides upward, providing entrance to the common room.

  Dagger clutched tight, Myrrh leaps from the wagon, sprints across the street, and shoulders the charmed smugglers out of the way before the Nightblade can draw his weapon across their throats. Growling, the man leaps at her, but she dodges artfully and runs to the side, gaze fixed on the newly opened window. As she bunches her legs and springs, diving through the opening, the Nightblade roars in frustration. His feet pound across the floorboards of the porch as he sprints back through the door, intent on intercepting her.

  The scene inside the inn is chaos. Even knowing what’s happening, that the common room is full of shadows fighting the insubstantial, Myrrh can hardly make sense of it. Tables crumple, legs splintering under the weight of unseen bodies. Glass mugs shatter, ale spraying and ever so briefly coating figures in foam, displaying the bounds of a phantom-vanished Knife or the outline of a shadowy Nightblade.

  Someone hits her from behind, hard, and Myrrh sprawls. She scrambles forward, looking over her shoulder, desperate to get clear of the next blow. There. She picks out a shape from the movement of shadows, yanks out her boot knife, and makes a desperate throw into the darkness. An angry yelp and a spray of blood reward her efforts.

  The strike buys her enough time to scramble to her feet, to weave through the madness and get her back to a wall. Scanning the room, she begins to make sense of the tumult. The Knives rendered invisible by the phantom seem to be holding their own, dancing away from shadows in a blur of wavering air. They appear to be dishing as many blows as they take. But the other Knives, the brave men and women who the Scythe recruited and Myrrh pressed into service to chase down her personal enemies, are not faring so well. Already, two have fallen and lie bleeding and moaning.

  Meanwhile, not a single Nightblade seems to have been slowed by an injury. Myrrh shakes her head. Whatever Nab had planned, either Myrrh’s forces came too early, or they arrived too late.

  They aren’t going to win this.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “RETREAT!” MYRRH SHOUTS even though she knows it’s too late and that of those who can hear her, most are so busy fighting for their lives they can’t possibly reach the exits. But she starts forward anyway, edging along the wall and shouting again and again for the Knives and her friends to save themselves.

  “Myrrh, stop!”

  Myrrh freezes at the sound of Nab’s voice so clear in her mind. She whips her head back and forth, searching for him.

  “Miser’s balls, you can be such an idiot. Did it occur to you to wait a day when the clouds came in? To try again tomorrow rather than barging in like this?”

  Myrrh shakes her head. Of course there’s no point in arguing that wet weather near Ostgard usually sets in for a week at a time, so Myrrh starts forward again, pushing for the door in hopes she can somehow hold the exit long enough for some people to escape.

  “I said stop. Listen, Myrrh.”

  She grits her teeth and, lacking a better idea, speaks into the empty air, hoping he can hear her. “It’s useless. Our best chance is to regroup.”

  “Your best chance is to listen to me because we can still win this, but I can’t do it alone. You have to get to the middle of the room.”

  “What?” She stares into the fray, the mix of insubstantial and solid figures locked in combat.

  “Just do it, Myrrh. We can argue about whether it was a good idea later.”

  “If we’re still alive,
” Myrrh mutters before she takes a deep breath and plunges into the melee.

  Glancing blows from struggling fighters knock her sideways and send her staggering as she marches through the spray of blood and spilled beer, across shards of glass and through the shout and sweat of desperate combatants. Shoulders hunched and dagger drawn, she stands waiting in the center of the room with her jaw clenched.

  “Sheathe your blade. Quick.”

  Okay, this is too much. Myrrh shakes her head.

  “I swear it, Myrrh, on…Sixes, I swear on whatever you think I should. If I’m lying, may I never taste a sweet bun again.”

  “Okay fine. I believe you. Why though?”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do, but you have to lift me up high. Onto your shoulders or something.”

  “What?” she asks, face screwing up in confusion.

  “I need people to be able to see me, and it’s not going to happen if I’m stuck down here looking at people’s belly buttons.

  The comment is so ridiculous, Myrrh almost laughs. A finger jabs her in the ribs. Hard. “Just do it,” Nab says.

  “Ow,” she mutters as she jams her dagger into its sheath, then holds out her hands. When Nab’s smaller, shadowy hands close around her wrists and guide the crooks of her thumbs to his armpits, she fights a brief impulse to tears. Nab’s really here, really okay, and he didn’t betray her after all.

  “Okay, lift me. Quick.”

  The little rat is much heavier than she remembers, which makes sense since he hasn’t let her pick him up for at least three years. Myrrh staggers under the weight, wondering, ridiculously, what she appears to be doing, squatting and straining in the middle of a losing battle. Like she’s attempting some desperate ritual maybe?

  Nevertheless, she resets her feet under her, pushes hard with her thighs, and manages to stand to her full height, arms stretched high overhead.

  Nab’s shadowy feet wiggle, and she takes a blow to the face from his bootheel.

  “Again, ow.”

  “Wimp. Okay, now I need you to yell. Scream, actually. As loud and high as you possibly can.”

  “Scream?”

  “Yes. Just do it.”

  Sucking in a tremendous breath, Myrrh screams with every drop of strength she can summon between holding Nab above her head and sidestepping shadowy combatants. She runs out of air and is sucking in a breath to shout again when Nab abruptly materializes, his ragged pants blocking her view of the room. She cranes her neck to look past him. The fighting has momentarily stopped. From the front door to the bar counter at the rear of the common room, all eyes are on her and her passenger.

  The stillness holds for a heartbeat, and then Nab wiggles in her grasp. When he makes a motion with his hands, she understands. He’s working a cantrip, and her scream got everyone’s attention.

  Abruptly, the cantrip takes hold, and Myrrh shakes her head in awe as all sound ceases and everyone stares up at Nab with rapt attention. He speaks softly and somewhat sadly. “The life of every Nightblade here is forfeit,” he says. “You will drop your weapons and submit to your execution. All fighters who are not Nightblades must carry out this command. Grant them a quick and merciful death, giving them freedom from the Void Stalker who stole their spirits long ago.”

  Myrrh’s arms have started to shake, trembling not only with the effort of holding Nab aloft but also with the realization of what the boy just had to do. The number of deaths he ordered. As Nightblades lose their shadow form and lay down their weapons, submitting their necks to the blades, her stomach heaves. The Knives waste little time in carrying out the executions.

  “You can put me down now,” Nab says in his regular boy’s voice, spoken from his throat rather than his mind. She sets him lightly on the ground, her jaw locked over her constricted throat. She shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have had to…I should have stopped Silver long before it came to this.”

  Nab shakes his head and runs his eyes over the ongoing massacre. When the last Nightblade sinks to her knees, hands clutching her gaping throat, the boy swallows. “The fault here belongs to neither of us. An event like this was inevitable the moment that Disciples of the Void infiltrated Skorry’s temple and poisoned the sunken pool, allowing the void taint to be spread by Skorry’s gifts. Rattle knew some of this and had begun to unravel a solution. But he wasn’t fast enough.”

  Myrrh blinks, trying to take in all this new information. The void? A sunken pool? Nab must have learned all of this after his so-called initiation. He’s going to have a lot to tell her after this is over and they’re on their way back to Ostgard.

  The sounds of labored breath fill the room, and then a few Knives begin to shuffle about the chamber, righting toppled chairs and gathering splintered wood against the wall. They step around the bodies for now as if waiting for instruction on dealing with the dead.

  Myrrh scans the bodies of the executed Nightblades, searching for Silver. She didn’t see Glint earlier, and he has no ability to vanish, so he must still be upstairs. “So this void taint…when you say it stole their spirits, you mean it changed these people?” That squares with what Sapphire overheard in her gambling hall while listening in to the men from the Port Cities talking about how their friends had become so different.

  Nab nods, looking weary beyond his years. “It may not look like it, but their deaths were a mercy.”

  Myrrh’s brow knits when she’s finished scanning the room. “Where’s Silver?”

  Head cocked, Nab surveys the room. “I don’t know. She has been leaving Glint upstairs, charmed into staying in place by her distraction cantrip, when she comes down to make a speech at sunset. If you’d arrived at the appointed moment, I would have been able to appear beside her and use the mass-delusion cantrip, and all this could’ve happened without anyone having to fight.”

  Myrrh rolls her eyes. “It was cloudy. We improvised.”

  The boy shrugs. “Anyway, I imagine Silver is still in her room playing with her toy. I can take care of her.”

  Myrrh shakes her head. “You can charm her, but it will be my hand on the blade. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  IN THE UPSTAIRS hall, Nab focuses on the latch to one of the bedroom doors and wiggles his fingers. The lock opens with a click. Myrrh just shakes her head. He’s going to be insufferable after this.

  Together, they lay fingers on the handle. She counts to three in a whispered voice, and they throw the door open, Nab running in first to capture Silver’s attention.

  Only, Silver isn’t there.

  Myrrh skids to a stop, feet sliding when the rug beneath them slips over the wood floor. She blinks, aghast, at Glint, who lies in the bed, bandages wound around his midsection, a sheet covering his legs.

  He holds a dagger to his own throat with a trembling hand. A drop of blood runs down his neck from where the blade has already bitten him. His face is slick with sweat, his eyes swimming with unshed tears.

  “Glint?” she whispers.

  He shakes his head, and the dagger bites deeper. “There’s no point now. She’s gone.”

  “No point to what? I don’t understand.” She edges closer, moving only her legs, upper body perfectly still so as not to provoke him.

  “Don’t you see, Myrrh? We were finally going to build the empire we dreamed of all those years ago.”

  Something is definitely not right. She keeps her eyes fixed on his face, searching for clues. But all she sees there is deep despair.

  “She’s been manipulating you,” Myrrh says gently. “Using her cantrips. Glint, you know her powers.”

  “No!” Glint yells, his weapon arm going rigid, the dagger quivering. “I told you not to come. I tried to make it easy for you by pretending it was difficult for me to leave you. But it was the easiest decision in the world. Only now, it doesn’t matter anyway because you ruined everything by following us.”

  Myrrh shakes her head. No matter what he says
, she refuses to believe this is Glint. Silver is speaking through him still. Acting through him still. She can’t get her eyes off the blade.

  “Listen,” she says. “You can beat her. Glint, her army is done. Defeated. We can go home and rebuild Ostgard now.”

  Glint’s breathing heavily now, sucking air through clenched teeth. His hand trembles on the blade.

  “She retreated for the sake of the cause. But don’t think she’s finished with you or Ostgard, especially now. Only now”—the tendons in his neck stand out as he strains both to cut his own throat and to resist the impulse—“I’ll never be part of it.”

  “Glint.” Myrrh raises her hands in a placating motion. “You don’t want to be part of whatever plans are inside her cracked skull. I know that. I have faith in the person you are. You’re just—”

  “Oh, for the sake of the Nines,” Nab says, shoving her aside. “You and your sixing drama.”

  Stepping between Myrrh and Glint, he raises his right hand and makes a quick gesture. Immediately after, Glint’s breathing slows. He lets out a soft moan.

  “She’s gone,” Nab says. “The cantrips are broken. You’re free to get back to whatever gooey stuff you want to say to Myrrh.”

  Myrrh can’t even look at Nab long enough to roll her eyes as, with a deep sigh, Glint lets his knife hand fall to the bed. The dagger slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor. Rushing forward, Myrrh kicks it under the bed and plants her hands on either side of Glint’s blanket-covered thighs.

  He winces as the motion jostles the bed. “Ow,” he says, hand reaching feebly for his bandaged midsection. Then, “Myrrh…” The hand comes up and touches her cheek. “Things are…fuzzy. I assume you came to rescue me despite my orders to the contrary.”

  She smirks. “You could say that.”

  “You know, I can’t suffer disobedience in my wenches,” he says with a crooked grin, tugging gently on a lock of her hair. “I’ll have to think up a suitable punishment for such headstrong behavior. For starters, you can kiss me.”