Castor would have died then if Vergun hadn’t hacked his falchion into Bershad—the heavy blade cleaving through his collarbone and deep into his chest. That put Bershad on his knees, but he immediately tripped Vergun with a sweeping kick, bringing him down with him.
Bershad tried to stab Vergun in the throat with the fork, but Vergun got his arm up so the utensil went into the meat of his forearm instead of his food pipe. He was too close for the spear to be much good anymore, so Bershad just got on top of Vergun and started punching him again and again with powerful, bone-crunching blows.
Castor picked up his sword.
It was in this moment—when Castor saw that while the falchion was still in Silas Bershad’s chest, all the sundered meat and bone the blade had cleaved apart was now healed to scar tissue—that he realized they truly were fighting a demon.
And while Castor didn’t have much experience with demons, he knew what you were supposed to do with them.
He grabbed Bershad in a tight hold, pinning both his arms behind his back—using every ounce of strength he had to keep the thrashing bastard restrained—and threw him down the well.
The Flawless Bershad went down with a wild clatter of flesh and steel slamming against stone. Landed with a splash that wasn’t nearly as far away as Castor would have hoped.
Vergun got to his feet. Spat a mouthful of blood and several teeth onto the ground. Ripped the fork out of his forearm.
“Thank you, Castor. That was good thinking.”
“Didn’t kill him. And it isn’t going to hold him.”
“No, I don’t believe it will.” Vergun held out his hand. “Give me your sword, and go back to the skyship.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Keep him occupied while you run through takeoff preparations.”
There were already sounds of grunting from the well. Bershad was climbing out.
“Boss. Being honest, I don’t think you can handle him alone.”
“Nor can we handle him together,” said Vergun. “But there is a very large ballista on that skyship. And you are a very good shot.”
Castor nodded.
“Understood, boss. I’m on it.”
59
BERSHAD
Down the Castle Well
The well was full of rats and mud and it smelled awful. It was too narrow for Bershad to do anything about the sword through his chest, so he just popped another nugget of Gods Moss into his mouth, then shimmied up with a series of grunts and curses.
Vergun tried to cut Bershad’s head off as soon as he cleared the lip of the well, but Bershad had been expecting that. He dropped down again—letting the sword pass harmlessly above his head—then vaulted off the lip and took a few quick strides. Now that he had some space, he ripped the falchion out of his chest and turned around.
Vergun had retreated to a set of stairs that led to a rampart above. He backed up the stairs as Bershad moved toward him.
“What did you do, let some mud demon fuck your asshole as a kid?” Vergun called. “Always heard you Almirans were into weird shit like that.”
Bershad didn’t respond. Just kept moving forward. When he reached the rampart, he lunged forward with a brutal hack.
Vergun skipped backward, executed a graceful riposte, then whipped his sword around to decapitate Bershad. He batted the blade away with his forearm, the steel sinking deep into the bone and sending a shock of pain up his arm.
“Not so keen on having your head removed from your body?” Vergun asked.
Bershad growled. Rushed forward and attacked again and again. Vergun parried and dodged and gave ground, effortlessly rebuffing the attacks. Vergun had always been the better swordsman.
“I must give you my compliments,” Vergun said, swatting away another attack. “Despite all of the farms we’ve destroyed and citizens of the Dainwood we’ve slain, you managed to keep your people somewhat well fed. I recently ate a delicious series of fried highborn fingers. They’re so tender and juicy when they’ve never done a day’s work in their lives.”
“You won’t rile me up by talking about eating the lords of this city.”
“Right, right. You never were on the best of terms with the nobility of this world. Always the rebel. Always apart.”
Vergun reached the end of the rampart.
“Of course, I didn’t restrict myself to the greedy lords,” Vergun continued. “You took so long to return, I had plenty of time to sample a full range of cuts. Women. Children. The little slumrats don’t have much flavor—too many bugs and rats in their diet. But there is something so savory about their screams when I—”
Bershad screamed. Charged.
Vergun smiled, then leapt off the castle wall, grabbing hold of a thick vine on his way over the edge and swinging into the yard of a manse, which was decorated with impaled men. Vergun darted inside a back door.
Bershad jumped off the wall. His kneecaps popped out of place on landing. He shoved them back into position and limped toward the manse, blood filled with acid rage.
60
NOLA
City of Deepdale, Lord Cuspar’s Manse
Nola had to move through the front chambers of Lord Cuspar’s manse before she could reach the back kitchens. The place had been ransacked by Wormwrot men. All the tapestries were torn off the walls. The furniture had been smashed. Someone had taken a shit in a corner. Nola pushed through the wreckage and into the back corridors.
Lord Cuspar’s kitchen was the most horrific place that Nola had ever seen.
Severed fingers had been left in cast-iron pans, the digits burned black in pools of butter and pepper. Limbs were hanging from meat hooks, caked in spice rubs. But worst of all were the seven heads that had been put into glass pickle jars and arranged on a shelf. She recognized their faces, because they belonged to the people Vergun had taken away to eat.
Shelley’s head was among them. Cuspar’s wasn’t.
Nola made a private promise to herself in that moment that if she managed to live through this night, she would never cook, serve, or eat another piece of meat in her life. Never again.
The interior door to the pantry was locked. Nola didn’t even bother looking for a key, she just grabbed that big cast iron pan, closing her eyes as she shook the fingers out of it, then she smacked the pan against the lock again and again until the whole thing snapped off and she could push through.
The captives were on the other side. All of them arranged along a set of shelves, sitting on the floor with their hands chained behind them. Cuspar. Trotsky. Vindy. Jakell.
And her sister.
“Grittle!”
Nola rushed to her. Felt her warm cheeks and breathed out a sigh of relief. Kissed her head. She was dazed, and seemed to have trouble focusing her eyes at first, but she gave a little confused smile.
“Nola?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, Grittle. It’s me. I’m here to get you out.”
The others were all stirring now. Vindy seemed even more dazed than Grittle, but she was alive. They were all alive. For now.
“What’s happened?” Jakell asked from his spot. “We heard dragons.”
“The city’s under attack.”
“Blackjacks?” Trotsky asked. His hair was still matted with blood from the chair leg that had been thrown at him a week ago.
“No. Lord Silas came back with his gray dragon.”
Trotsky’s eyes widened. “I was right?”
“There’s no time, Trot.” Nola examined the lock around Grittle’s wrists, which was attached to a steel bar that had been hammered into the cabinets. “How do I get this open?”
“They keep the key over there.” Trotsky jerked his head toward a ceramic jar meant for bread flour.
Nola wasted no time smashing the jar onto the kitchen floor, digging up the key, and unlocking them. When that was done, she ripped the iron rod out of the hinge, setting them all free.
“Are you hurt?” she asked Grit
tle, touching her arms and face and hands in rapid succession.
“I’m fine.” She sniffled. “They only found us yesterday. The soldiers brought us here as a gift to the commander. Said we’d be a nice … nice … snack.” She paused, then whispered. “We could hear what he did to Shelley.”
Nola’s stomach dropped. Her throat went dry. All this time, she’d held out hope that Grittle had been safe in the cellar—shielded from the horrors of Vallen Vergun. She didn’t care about the terrible things she’d been put through—the things that she had done herself—but seeing those same things in Grittle’s eyes broke her heart.
She glared at Cuspar. A living reminder of the dark decision she’d made.
“What about you? Are you hurt?”
The lord held up one hand. There weren’t any fingers left on it.
“Good.”
“Nola!” Jakell gasped. “Please. We’re all in this together.”
“Tell that to Shelley’s head, which is brining in a glass jar in the next room.”
“What does that have to do with him?” Vindy asked.
Nola glared at Cuspar.
“It’s not important right now. We need to get out of here.” She helped Grittle stand up. “We’ll go out the same way I came in, through the front—”
Someone burst through the back door of the kitchen and slammed into the shelves, sending porcelain plates clattering to the floor. Vergun. He rushed back to the door and closed it. Flipped the wooden bar down to block it. He was breathing hard and his face was battered and swollen and bleeding. He seemed just as surprised to find them there as she was to see him.
“Little rats,” he snarled.
Trotsky charged him, picking up a meat cleaver as he crossed the kitchen. He hacked at Vergun, who parried the attack easily and sent Trotsky stumbling into a cabinet. Vergun reared back to run his sword through Trotsky, but before he could, Lord Cuspar picked up a shard of broken porcelain plate with his good hand and stabbed Vergun in the meat of his back, causing him to drop his sword.
“Run!” Cuspar shouted.
Jakell and Vindy did exactly that, disappearing through the manse. But Nola reached down and grabbed her own shard of broken plate—not thinking, really, just reacting.
The fight was over so fast that Nola couldn’t tell exactly what had happened. One moment, Trotsky and Cuspar were piling on Vergun from both directions, punching and beating and screaming and grunting. The next, Vergun had slashed Cuspar’s throat wide open with the cleaver and Trotsky was on the ground, groaning and holding his stomach.
Vergun turned to Nola and Grittle. Smiled.
Before Vergun could do anything, the barred door shuddered from impact. Once. Twice. On the third hard pound, the bar started to splinter.
“Stubborn bastard,” Vergun muttered.
A heartbeat later, he had a handful of Grittle’s hair and the cleaver pressed against Nola’s throat.
“Struggle even a little, and you die soaked in each other’s blood. Understand?”
Nola gagged. Nodded.
There was another shocking impact on the door. The bar shattered, and Lord Silas came through. He was coated in black mud from navel to toes. The rest of him was covered in blood.
Vergun threw the meat cleaver at his head.
The blade hit him in the temple and he crumpled to the floor in a heap.
Nola’s heart sank.
“No!” Grittle screamed.
Vergun drew a strange knife made from bone and pressed that against Nola’s neck.
“Is that enough to kill him?” Vergun muttered. There was a hint of fear in his voice, which didn’t make sense given that there was a cleaver blade embedded in Lord Silas’s skull.
But a moment later, Silas pulled the cleaver out of his head and stood up. Nola watched with horrified fascination as the wound closed, leaving a long scar and a streak of blood. Nothing else
“He does have dragon magic,” Grittle whispered. “I knew it.”
“Take one step forward, and I’ll gut them both,” Vergun warned.
Lord Silas glared at him. There was a wild look in his eyes that made Nola’s stomach churn.
“Do it,” he rasped. “Fuck if I care.”
“Please. You didn’t run all the way back to Deepdale just to put two more children’s souls on your conscience. You can save their lives if you walk back out that door.”
“Their souls have nothing to do with it. I came back to kill you, Vallen. And that’s what I’m about to do.”
Bershad took a step forward. In that moment, he didn’t look at all like the man who’d enjoyed a beer in her tavern or told her sister where to catch a fish. He looked like a true demon, full of fury and rage.
Vergun pressed the bone knife harder against Nola’s throat, making her gag.
“I’m warning you.”
“You already warned me.” Lord Silas took another step. “Now finish it. Soon as that girl’s throat opens, I’m gonna tear your fucking head off.”
“Have it your way, Silas.”
Nola felt the bone knife skim forward a little, and she’d seen enough Dunfarian pigs killed over the last few weeks to know what came next: raking it back across her throat and killing her.
She brought her hand up to Vergun’s wrist, pressed the shard of plate against his skin, and yanked down. Felt his flesh catch, then his muscle tear. He grunted as the bone knife fell away from her throat for the smallest of moments. An instant later, the point came careening back toward her, aimed directly at her eye.
Before it could connect, Lord Silas threw the cleaver.
There was a wet smack. The bone dagger flashed across her cheek instead of going through her eye. Vergun thudded against the wall behind her. She turned to see the cleaver lodged in his right shoulder. He struggled to his feet and ran toward the front of the manse.
“You all right?” Lord Silas said, crouching down next to her. Putting a hand on her face.
“It’s not deep, I don’t think,” she said, even though it felt very deep. The pain was searing and strong. Her legs were weak.
Lord Silas grabbed a rag from the counter and pressed it against her cheek, hard.
“Take this. Push hard. Hard as I’m pushing now.” He looked down the hallway, eyes still wild and full of rage. “Get out of the city as soon as you’re able.”
He moved toward the kitchen.
“Lord Silas?” Grittle asked.
He stopped. Turned around.
“Did you mean what you said?” she asked. “That our souls don’t matter to you?”
He gave Grittle a long look. There was a flicker of some softer emotion on his face. But it didn’t last very long.
“I never said your souls don’t matter. I said they had nothing to do with it.”
Lord Silas ran after Vergun. The sound of his bloody feet moving down the hallway made a sticky, wet noise, then faded away.
Grittle started crying.
“It’s okay,” Nola said, hugging her sister. “Lord Silas saw the broken plate in my hand and he knew that I’d help.” Nola looked at her sister. “Understand? He cares about me and he cares about you.”
But Grittle wasn’t looking back at her. She was looking beyond her, tears streaming down her cheeks.
It wasn’t until Nola turned around that she saw Trotsky had died.
61
BERSHAD
City of Deepdale, Lord Cuspar’s Manse
Bershad followed Vergun’s muddy footprints through the manse until he reached his boots, which had been kicked off in the main foyer to eliminate his trail. The front door to the manse was wide open, leading down into the city.
“Not gonna be that easy, asshole,” Bershad muttered.
Everything smelled like charred human meat, making it hard to pick up Vergun’s scent, but it was there—acid adrenaline and the earthy smell of turmeric on his breath. And it led upstairs, not outside.
The rooms upstairs were numerous and connected by a maz
e of doors. Vergun had woven through them in an erratic pattern, but it didn’t matter. Bershad followed his scent to the back of the house, bursting into a bedroom just in time to see Vergun’s pale feet hanging outside a window, then rising out of sight.
Bershad followed him.
By the time he had crawled out the window and climbed up to the roof, Vergun was already halfway across, running full tilt toward the next manse. He’d hit Vergun in the shoulder socket with the cleaver, and that arm lolled broken at his side, but the bastard still managed to leap across the gap and land with a surprising amount of grace.
Bershad hopped the gap. Caught up with Vergun just as he was realizing that the next manse was too far away to jump again.
He was trapped.
“They should call you Vergun the Fucking Squirrel,” Bershad said, coming up to him.
Vergun turned around. Pale hair slick with sweat. “So, this is what you had to become to kill me? A demon.”
“This is what I’ve always been.”
Bershad darted forward. He coiled his arms and unleashed every ounce of moss-fueled strength that he had left in his body.
But Vergun parried with the dragontooth dagger.
Bershad had put so much momentum into the attack that the falchion was broken in half by the dagger. The point skittered off the roof and into the darkness. Vergun rammed the dagger straight through Bershad’s liver. His legs gave out, but he took Vergun down with him. They fell together in a heap. Bershad shoved the broken edge of the falchion through Vergun’s rib cage. Twisted it. Felt his bones spread. Bend. Snap.
Vergun hissed out a rough curse, then head-butted Bershad so hard that his entire nose shattered. But Bershad didn’t let go of the sword. He kept twisting with one hand. Put the other on Vergun’s throat and started to squeeze. Vergun’s eyes bulged. Pale skin started turning red, then purple.
Bershad was so overcome with rage that there wasn’t a clear thought in his head. Just the maniacal desire to watch Vallen Vergun die. But before he could snuff out the last scrap of life from Vergun’s lungs, the roar of a skyship filled Bershad’s ears. Vergun’s bulging eyes shifted to a point over his shoulder, and he smiled.
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