by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 53
“Kill them,” the copper-haired man said. “And destroy the wights.”
Without another word, he sprinted forward, moving so fast that Abass could track him only with his dew-enhanced vision. Qatal leaned down, grabbed a wight, and hurled the creature right at the Renewed.
The wight struck the Renewed with a crash, and chunks of stony flesh flew through the air. Abass ducked and kicked, snapping the closest wight’s leg, and then pushed himself off the ground. As he flew into the air, he kicked again, shattering another wight’s jaw and landing in a crouch.
Eses poured into the room, most with clubs, some with chains and nets. The wights turned their attention to Abass, and he slid back, smashing claws and arms when they came within reach. One wight managed to get past Abass’s guard and grab him by the ankle, its talons slicing through the black leather and flesh beneath. Abass fell backward as it jerked his feet out from under him.
He hit the ground hard, his head rebounding from the stone. For half a heartbeat, black pinpricks danced in front of his eyes, but the dew surged in response. Abass kicked himself free and rolled clear as another wight slammed a foot down right where Abass’s head had been. The stone buckled and cracked under the wight’s foot. Abass slid forward across the smooth stone, scrambled to his feet, but not before he locked eyes on one of the human bodies the wights had been feeding on.
She had been a middle-aged woman, fat, and death had caused her flesh to sag in a way unrecognizable to life. Nothing remarkable about her—unless, Abass decided, one were to count the grey, glassy eyes. Veins of grey covered her legs and appeared on her arms, just past the sleeves of her blouse. The dead woman shifted with the sound of stone grinding on stone.
Even with the bloodlust of the dew in him, roaring like the sea, Abass felt terror grip him. Dead flesh resting on stone. The way stone-wights were born. The woman sat up, the grey running over her like cheap paint, and one wrinkled hand—fingers hard and sharp as stone—lashed out at Abass.
Instinct, more than dew, saved his life that time, but he was still not fast enough. Her fingers opened three jagged gashes along his cheek. Abass staggered back, pulling on his dew as hard as he could, until he thought he could feel it pulse in time with his heart. The world slowed around him, but the wights still moved quickly. Abass ducked another wight’s fist and slammed his palm into its chest. It windmilled back to land on a pile of bodies—all grey, Abass saw, and starting to stir.
“More wights,” he shouted.
Twin cracks sounded behind him, and suddenly Fadhra stood at his side, still holding her gruesome, make-shift clubs. “Father take them,” Fadhra swore. “I’ll deal with the wights; you two take care of the eses and the Renewed.”
Before Abass could protest, she grabbed a shard of stone from the ground and sliced open her forearm from elbow to wrist. The stench of blood filled the air.
As one, the wights turned to stare at her.
Fadhra’s dark, beautiful eyes shone for a long moment, and she grinned. Then, faster than Abass thought possible, she sprinted toward the eses, dodging clubs and nets with the agility of dew, and disappeared into the next room. Rippling clicks of stone on stone sounded as the wights turned, empty faces fixed on the trail of fresh blood. The wights rushed after Fadhra, tearing great gouges in the stone as they went, knocking aside or killing the eses in their haste to follow her. The eses, to their credit, tried to catch the wights, and more than one wight fell as the eses trapped them in nets or hammered at stony knees to slow the monsters. Some of the wights stopped, distracted by the wounded eses and the promise of closer, and easier, prey.
Qatal rolled across the ground, locked with the copper-haired man as they flailed at each other. Qatal shifted as he came to rest on the ground, wedged his legs under the copper-haired man, and kicked. With a whoosh of breath, audible even over the sounds of the eses fighting the remaining wights, the copper-haired man flew across the room and slid along the floor.
He got to his feet easily, wiping dust from the green and brown robes. Two brown triangles showed on the fine cloth. A lap-esis, one of the most powerful members of the temple. The same rank Qatal had been, before Isola had disappeared.
“Tair fend,” the man said, a wry smile covering his face as he clapped the dust from his hands. “You’re pathetic; you must have been burning through your Renewal, for you to be so weak now. Did you kill these people thinking you could Renew yourself without a disi? Or have you taken up voramancy?”
Qatal regained his feet more slowly. Blood ran in a wide trickle from his nose and the corner of his mouth, and he stood slightly hunched, favoring his right side. “What are you talking about, Balat?” he asked.
“All this,” the man said, gesturing at the bodies. “We’ve found them all over the city—almost all of the Sleeping Palaces, swarming with stone-wights that used to be corpses. Why do you always leave them in the Palaces? Stone-wights aren’t good for anyone.”
Abass’s mouth went dry. Qatal had killed all these peoples? It didn’t seem possible.
“Father take me,” Qatal said, “I didn’t do this. This is madness.”
Balat shrugged off his robe, revealing a plain shirt and trousers underneath. “Yes, it is quite mad. Not you, you say? The tair will find out the truth, when I take you back to him. We’ll see how long you can resist him cutting on you with the disi before you speak. You were a fool to leave us.” He folded the robe and laid it across the arm of a still standing, headless wight. “Ayde will be so disappointed that I found you; she’s been rather furious about what you did to Sarem.”
“Was that Renewed her pet?” Qatal said. “I thought he was yours; you always fancied the ones that had hair like your own.”
“He was her favorite, I’m afraid. You’ve let yourself go, Qatal,” Balat said. “How long has it been since you rested? How thin have you pushed your own Renewal?”
“Come find out,” Qatal said.
With an almost embarrassed smile, Balat leaned back. Then, so quickly that he blurred even to Abass’s vision, he sprang forward, two long arcs of light appearing in the hazy outlines of his hands. Qatal threw himself to the side, and a shower of sparks, along with the screech of metal, filled the air as Balat struck the wall.
Balat slowed to normal speed and turned to toss a ruined knife to the ground; the blade had snapped, but the metal was twisted, as though it had melted. Qatal scrabbled to his feet. Balat shifted the remaining knife to his other hand, grinned, and ran forward, blurring again.
Abass was ready for him this time. Even as Qatal shifted to avoid Balat’s attack, Abass slammed dew through his veins, so that time ground to halt; he could make out Balat’s form, but the man still moved too fast. Abass scooped up a handful of stone and hurled them. They whistled through the air, propelled by dew-enhanced strength, and struck Balat in the face before he even realized they were there.
Balat spun, hands going to his face, and let out an angry shout. Qatal darted forward, driving one foot down onto the side of Balat’s knee. The Renewed toppled with a howl that cut off as Qatal struck him in the throat with the side of his hand. Qatal grabbed Balat by his short, copper hair and drove his knee into Balat’s face once, twice, three times. Handsome face twisted in a grimace, Qatal pushed Balat’s bloody, ruined face away and let him fall to the ground.
“We need to go now,” Qatal said.
Abass stared at him; he had never seen violence like that before. Not from Qatal. A part of him wondered if Qatal really could have killed all those people. Where did Qatal go when he wasn’t at Maq’s? Where had he gone that night after the hold?
“Now,” Qatal said, grabbing Abass by the arm and pushing him toward the door. The eses were still fighting the wights, but the wights—recently fed—were too quick, too strong, and the eses had been driven into a tight knot.
Abass stumbled across the floor. His heart was hummingbird fast again—speeding himself up that much had burned through the dew
. Something struck him, knocking Abass to the ground. Qatal flew across the room to hit the corner of one of the enormous windows. The blond man slid to the ground and lay unmoving.
Balat stood a few feet away from Abass, where he had struck them. He picked shards of stone from his face, and even as Abass watched, the wounds closed up, the man’s nose—a broken blob—returned to its normal shape in a matter of heartbeats. Balat’s face was full of fury. To Abass, the clatter of the stone chips on the floor was infinitely louder than the battle between the eses and the wights. The splinters of stone hit the floor in time with Balat’s measured steps toward Qatal.
The healing had taken something out of Balat, for he moved slowly across the room, and more than once Abass saw him limp. Each step brought him closer to the unconscious Qatal and to that window that opened up onto the dew-twilight nothingness beyond. Abass glanced around; his pouch of dew had fallen during the fight earlier, but he had enough dew left in him to escape—one good jump would carry him into Old Truth, where he could hide. Or enough dew left for one good punch. A punch that, most likely, would distract Balat just long enough for the Renewed to kill Abass.
Then he saw it. The other dagger—steel shining amid the remains of a shattered wight, where it had fell when Qatal had attacked Balat. Abass slid toward it, hand reaching out to grasp the handle. Even after all those years, the grip felt so familiar, so right. All those hours of practice, all the training. It was like clasping hands with an old lover. It made Abass’s heart pound with terror.
Abass shifted and looked back. Balat had almost reached Qatal. Abass hefted the knife. This was where it had all gone wrong, all those years ago. How Isola had been hurt, when it had just been a game. His aim had been so good, so true—until the last throw. The dagger felt like a live coal in Abass’s hand; he could still hear her single, breathy gasp, a hundred times worse than a scream, when the blade had sunk into her chest, just above her budding breasts.
He let the dagger clatter back to the floor. Balat did not turn; he bent over Qatal, struggling to lift the blond man into the air. Abass reached behind him, blindly, and grabbed something solid. He pulled the dew into him, concentrated the last of it. Shadows blossomed like nightflowers around him as the dew-light vanished. Abass threw.
His missile hurtled through the air, propelled by dew and fear. It struck Balat in the back of the head with a wet thud, like an overripe melon hitting the ground. A fine mist of blood hung in the air for half a heartbeat, barely visible in the torchlight that broke the darkness of the Palace. Qatal slid from Balat’s senseless hands, and a moment later Balat hit the ground as well.
Abass crawled over to them, heart pounding with the manic frenzy of expired dew. Cold sweat burned Abass, all over him, and his arms and legs shook and threatened to give way. A child could have knocked him to the ground. But he crawled, until he reached Balat.
Buried in the short, coppery hair, now matted with blood, was lodged the shattered edge of the stone boot of a wight. Abass shuddered. He wanted to collapse, to sleep, but he forced himself to search in the darkness, sweeping the floor with his hands until he found the pouch. He popped a cube of dew into his mouth, grateful for the rush of deep, rich oil and sudden fiery life inside him. Darkness melted away into the twilight-noon of the dew.
Qatal still lay unconscious. A shout from the eses drew Abass’s glance; wights were clambering back down the stairs, swarming over the eses from the other direction, pinning them between the wights who remained in the room. Abass flipped Balat’s body over, examined him. The flesh was still warm, but he did not draw breath, and his heart no longer beat. Abass retrieved the dagger and sliced Balat’s throat, just to be sure. He cleaned the blade on Balat’s green robe and tucked it behind his belt.
Then, lifting Qatal easily, Abass perched on the ledge of the vast window. The purple-white expanse of night sky spread out before him. The city, its myriad colors visible in the dew-light, was quiet. An esis screamed behind Abass. Without looking back, he launched himself out into the darkness.
He leaped two rooftops before he found a safe spot to hide Qatal. Abass checked the knife, then turned and jumped back toward the tower. Fadhra had not returned. She was still in there, somewhere, with the wights. With Balat, if the Renewed somehow survived. Dew pounded in Abass, but below the frantic energy, he could feel fatigue gripping him, ready for the dew to falter. He had to find Fadhra.