by Jackson Lear
He went to skewer my throat.
“Volché!” cried Zara, as she snapped one end of her manacles through the bars. The leather straps attacked Krassis’ side, catching his arm and pulling his sword off course, saving my life by an inch.
I kicked out, my legs longer and caught him in the thigh as he twisted away from the strike. I got a decent handful of his tunic, tried to pull him down while manacling him across the face. Then the leather straps got me as well, one slapping me straight across my eyes.
Zara shrieked in her native language, a single word, but one which blasted Krassis off his feet and slamming him into the bars behind. That yanked the leather satchel with him. That dragged me along with it.
“Senka.”
Krassis dropped to his knees, dazed.
Zara scooped up her manacles and passed one end to me. “Take it.”
Krassis tossed the satchel out of the cell, it being more of a liability now than an asset. He got to his feet. I did the same. He sneered at us both. “Lavarta’s going to die tonight unless I stop it. And there’s a hundred watchmen between you and the way out.”
I had no idea what Zara was doing behind me but the expression on Krassis’ face was peculiar, like he truly hadn’t expected her to do whatever she just did.
Krassis went for me. I had little choice but to dive towards him. He saw his chance to escape, then I saw what Zara had been up to.
She stood naked, whipped her outfit between the bars and struck Krassis in the face. I spun, clobbered the back of his head with one set of manacles and then another. He tried to spin, his sword clunking against the cell doorway.
Zara whipped out again, lassoing his sword arm and yanking back on it. I slammed two hits with the manacles into his left arm as he tried to defend himself. Zara jabbed with her fingernails into Krassis’ neck while pulling on his sword arm. I kicked at his thigh, trying to take his knee out but he had brought his leg up faster than I expected.
He dropped, taking us both by surprise. Zara lost her grip and Krassis managed to avoid two face attacks with my manacles. He jabbed from the ground, and readied a spell – a last ditched effort at getting out of there alive. He would’ve succeeded too until Zara grabbed onto the top of his head, claiming a nice chunk of hair, and slammed his skull into the bars.
I belted one, two, three manacle hits into his face.
He hit me with a spell, propelling me off my feet and swiped back behind him, his sword haphazardly aiming for Zara. She blasted him with another spell, a defeaning CLINK and rattle of metal as Krassis flew to the other side of the cell – and his sword dropping to the ground in Zara’s cell, caught between the bars.
I got to my feet. He did the same. I was armed. Zara had his sword. Krassis had shit.
I spun both sets of manacles around; a whirlwind of agony if he got close enough. Snapped one out. Struck with the second. Repeated. Krassis deflected and stepped away, forced back from the barrage of my attacks. He tried to break it with a kick, side step, lunge, and even a spell. Knocked me off balance. He ran for the cell door, slipping past with the full expectation of Zara going for his chest, but that wasn’t her target.
She dropped to one knee. Caught him in his calf, a clean jab all the way through and a slice down. Krassis cried out, the back of one leg hanging free, gushing blood onto the ground.
His eyes shifted to a new priority – flee by any means possible. He hobbled forward, testing his leg while knowing that he couldn’t risk falling over. He tried it, grimacing like he had just cleaned his wound with a gallon of lemon juice. Reached for the keys by his waist.
I charged after him, belted him across the back of the head, went for a kick in his kidneys that he dropped away from, allowing me to hit him in the shoulder blades. He tried to kick back, the balance of his wounded leg failing him.
Zara flung her ragged prisoner’s outfit around his neck, yanked him towards her, and squeezed.
I pulled at his waist, trying to get the keys from his belt. He swung his hand towards me, trying to gouge me. Zara loosed her grip, Krassis’ neck muscles throwing his head to the side, then she yanked back again, thunking his head against the bars.
I landed a kick to his ribs, hard enough to wind him. His whole body started to slacken.
“Take it!” shrieked Zara, as she slid Krassis’ sword towards me with her foot.
I scooped it up, sliced the keys free, and pressed the tip of the sword against the inside of his right-hand palm, pining it against the ground. “You can let him go.”
“He’s going to kill the commander and Miss Kasera.”
“I know. Let’s give him a moment to confess. Then we kill him.”
Zara looked to me like I had just lost my mind. “If you’re trying to impress me with some sense of honor …”
“I’m really not.” I sliced Krassis across his right hand. Not enough to lose it, but enough to dampen his skills with the sword in case he broke free.
I handed Zara the keys to her cell. She pulled her clothes free and got dressed.
“We have to kill him,” she said.
“It’s not just him we’re after. It’s whoever ordered him to do it.”
Krassis grunted with a smile. Zara wrenched his right arm towards her, locked one manacle around his wrist, and knelt on his flattened hand.
“Kasera’s going to kill you,” muttered Krassis. “Both of you.”
I grabbed onto a mound of Krassis’ hair. Rammed his skull against the bars. “Let’s start again. Did you kill Artavian?”
“Fuck you.”
I sliced his right hand thumb with his sword, separating it from his body.
He cried out. When he couldn’t jam his hand into his armpit he tried to bring his armpit down to his hand. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.”
“I have honor. You’re nothing more than a cutthroat thug.”
“Then the pleasure is all mine.” I peered back at the lamp behind me; a small bowl of oil with a curved metal rod holding it in place as a handle, a wick through the lid of the lamp, burning gently. “I wonder how agreeable you would be if I set you on fire.”
He grimaced. Zara took the keys. Peered through the keyhole. “I don’t think anyone’s out there.”
I held my focus on Krassis. “Did you kill Artavian?”
“I’m not telling you shit,” he muttered.
I turned to Zara. “How do we get him to talk?”
Zara crept forward, staring down at the governor’s assassin. “Take your tunic off.”
He sneered back at her. “No.”
“Or I tell him how to break you.”
He glared back at her. “You know nothing about me.”
Zara stepped back, her eyes heavy after years of hiding from the man in front of her. “He’s covered in tattoos. Some to hide wounds. The rest to guarantee another life. That’s how you get to him.”
He practically snarled at her.
I smirked back at him. “Lycyx, isn’t it? I guess now would be a good time to make amends to her, if you ever hope to grace her in the afterlife.”
“You’ve got nothing on me.”
“No? I’ve been to the temple in in Torne. What do they have there? A priest? Priestess? Enchanter? Prophet?”
“Septum.”
I leaned towards Krassis, locking eyes with him. “I have everything on you … including excommunication.”
A blink of unrivaled panic, running through a dozen questions in a split second: was that possible? Could he do that? What would happen if he succeeded?
“You either tell me the truth now or you’ll be taking one hell of a gamble on your entire afterlife. I mean, you didn’t even give Artavian a hunter’s death, did you? You had him pinned down so he couldn’t fight back and you drowned him. Your god may look the other way but five minutes in front of a septum … someone who can be swayed, bribed, or even someone who just doesn’t feel like giving last rites to someone who murdered one of the most important peo
ple in the governor’s army ... an excommunication is coming for you hard.”
“She’ll pardon me.”
“Will she? Do you know her already?”
“Better than you do.”
“So she and the governor have an understanding, is what you’re saying?”
“Yeah. I’m protected.”
I told Zara: “We need to get him on a donkey and cart. We’ll also need someone who can get that donkey going in the right direction. With any luck we can reach Verseii before midnight.”
Zara squinted at me, uncertain at first, then slowing figuring me out.
Our new friend, meanwhile, lost most of the muscle control in his face. “What?”
“You said you were protected. In Torne, right?”
A renewed panic came over him.
I asked Zara, “Verseii has a temple to Lycyx, yeah?”
A devilish smile came over her. “Yes.”
I returned to Krassis. “There we go. Someone who doesn’t know who you are, isn’t in the pocket of the governor, knows that an unfortunate death happened in their own town, and someone who won’t face any repercussions at all for excommunicating an assassin. Let’s go.”
“No! Wait!”
“No waiting. Let’s get a move on.”
“I was under orders!”
I gave him a moment’s reprieve. “By Governor Gustali?”
With a heavy breath, he said, “Caton.”
“To do what?”
“Kill the aide-de-camp of Commander Lavarta’s cohort before he reached Torne.”
“Why?”
He grunted as a burning hatred ran through his eyes. “He figured out that I was engineering a confrontation between the cavalry and the northern raiders.”
“You kidnapped the farmhand?”
“Yes.”
“You used him as bait and let yourself be seen by northern scouts?”
“Yes.”
“So that the cavalry and northerners would intercept each other?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the farmhand?”
Krassis lowered his head, staring back at me through the faintest of light. “A vampire got to him before the cold did.”
“So you fucked up. That’s why Artavian had to die, because you had to cover your tracks.”
“I was ordered to.”
“Because you had fucked up?”
Krassis held his silence. I’d assume that meant I was correct and that pride was eating him alive.
“Were you ordered to kill Lavarta as well?”
“He was supposed to die in battle.”
“And you were going to ensure that?”
Krassis nodded. “I was ready with a spell. There has been a raid, eighteen out of the last twenty years, and the northerners were on the move south. It was going to happen.”
“And then it didn’t. That’s what happens when you trust others to behave the way you expect them to. Why does Caton want Lavarta dead?”
“I don’t think he actually does but he had to appease the governor’s kid and give him a heroic win.”
“So Caton got tired of reading all of Lieutenant Gustali’s complaints about being overlooked? About having to repair the old fort all by himself? About losing most of the mock battles he was up against?”
Krassis nodded. “Some of his letters made it past Caton and went straight to the governor. Father and son are both known for excessive exaggeration and for taking every minor slight like a wound to the chest.”
“So this whole mess is because some dipshit lieutenant was being a whiny little bitch and running his mouth off to daddy dearest?”
Krassis squinted and – ever so slowly – nodded. “You gotta keep the Gustalis happy. They’re used to getting their way.”
“Why not just let them rot? Aren’t they the butt of all jokes wherever they go?”
Krassis scoffed once more. “Typical. You’re a thug with loyalty to no one. No wonder you don’t understand.”
“That’s exactly it. Take off your clothes.”
Krassis remained exactly where he was.
“It’s either a quick death by me or a long one by her.”
He tugged on his manacled wrist and shifted his attention onto Zara for but a moment. “If I don’t meet my people tonight, Kasera is going to know all about you.”
Zara looked my way, urging me to let her end Krassis.
“I can help you,” I said to Zara.
“How?”
“I know the underworld better than you do.”
“They’re not the ones I’m afraid of.”
“Then I’ll burn every last favor I have with Alysia so that you come out on top.”
Zara stared back, not quite understanding where I was going with that.
“You know her world better than I do.” I peered back at Krassis. “Strip. Now.”
After a few moments of ‘my eyebrows are more sinister than yours’, Krassis peeled off his tunic and ran it down the end of his manacles. Zara took it. Swapped her clothing out. Tossed her repurposed sack into her former cell.
“Bitch,” muttered Krassis, as he stood holding his balls.
Zara hadn’t been kidding about the tattoos. His body was littered with them. One holy emblem after another across his chest, scripture running up and down his torso, self-inflicted scars across his shoulders, and a prominent constellation that I’d seen in the temple of Lycyx.
I looked to Zara as she fixed the small commander’s outfit across her body. “Can you get us out dressed like that?”
“Maybe.”
Krassis snorted with a quick grin.
“What?”
“Let me go and I’ll tell you.”
Wham!
Krassis fell to his knees, his nose bloodied and his hands cupping his face.
“Tell us or you’ll be excommunicated.”
Krassis grunted, clicked his nose. Definitely broken. “I already gave the go-ahead.”
I squeezed his throat. “Against Alysia or the commander?”
He sneered back at me, his mouth a bloody mess. “Both of them.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Zara peered into the corridor with Krassis’ sword, ready to strike anyone coming our way. She signaled an all clear.
I lifted a sacked, gagged, and manacled Krassis to his feet and shoved him forward, keeping him three yards behind Zara in case he tried to tackle her and get his sword back.
We crept along, Krassis limping and uniquely quiet. I had little doubt that he knew we were being watched, or that if we weren’t then there was no point in him causing a scene right then and there since no one would be able to help him. He was simply biding his time.
The light from the lamp was barely enough to get us across the uneven tiles in the dank corridor, the air so thick that our own breath clung to our faces like a spider’s web. Zara remained barefoot, tiptoeing forward, arcing her head back whenever Krassis rattled his manacles. I jabbed Krassis in the ribs to quieten him down. He grunted beneath the rag. I yanked on his earlobe and pulled him down to the ground, much to his muffled cries of distress.
“If you know what I put Beriss through for only twenty marks then you can use your imagination on what I’ll do to you for all the shit I know you’re guilty of. You make another sound and I’ll desecrate every tattoo you have.” I grabbed the back of his hair, pulled him up onto his feet, kept my fist locked with his head in place, and pushed the asshole forward.
We reached the next heavy door. Locked. Zara peered through the keyhole. Lingered. Leaned back with a sigh.
‘Problem?’ I signaled.
‘Orin,’ she mouthed.
‘Alone?’
She nodded.
I swiped a line across my throat.
Zara glared back at me.
“He’s dirty,” I whispered.
“So are you.”
Fair enough. I pointed behind us. Signaled a locking motion.
Zara grumbled wi
th a reluctant nod. ‘You or me?’
‘You.’
She glared back at me. I pointed at her uniform. ‘So?’
“Fine. Let’s swap clothes and I’ll go knock Orin out.”
Another glare. “I’m not changing my clothes again.”
My turn to sigh. “How far away is he?”
We swapped positions. I pressed one eye against the keyhole. Even though it was slightly brighter out there than it was in here it still didn’t make it easier to figure out what Orin was doing. I tried to angle myself to see if the room where I was stripped was open. Couldn’t tell.
There was a reasonable chance that Kace or a few other watchmen were in there and that they were about to make my life hell. I turned to Zara. “Can I kill them?”
“They are more useful to us alive than dead,” she whispered.
I gestured towards Krassis. ‘What about him?’
She had no immediate answer for that. Considering that she wanted him dead and I wanted him alive, I didn’t see much of a middle ground between us. Zara prodded me towards the door.
I took Krassis’ satchel of leather straps, took the sword from Zara, rummaged through the set of keys, found the right one, held my breath. Click.
The door creaked open. The door into the side room holding our clothes was open as well. Lit. Someone was inside.
Orin turned.
I charged. Threw the satchel into the open doorway. “Volché!” The leather straps flung about, striking everything in range and causing shriek after shriek in the small room.
Orin fell back in the corridor, already off balance as I ran into him. He uttered a distressed and garbled cry as he reached for his sword. I slammed into his side, knocking him down, dropped onto his right-hand wrist, pinned it down and slammed the pommel of Krassis’ sword into Orin’s sternum. Followed it up with a punch to his face. Stunned him for half a second. Slammed my fist back into his solar plexus. His mouth blasted open. Winded. I slid the tip of the sword between his teeth. Held it there. He became a lot easier to control from that moment.
“Get up.” He did so.
The room to my left fell quiet. Lieutenant Kace and one of the watchmen had their wrists and throats bound by the leather satchel, gasping with faint cries for help. Neither had a sword in their hand.