by Matthew Ward
She nodded. Malachi kissed his wife again. Slowly, reluctantly, she shepherded the children into the kitchen. Sevaka and Braxov followed, the former already limping.
As soon as they were out of sight, Malachi slumped. “I’d talk you out of this, but I find I really don’t want to.”
“I know,” said Josiri. “Let’s get it over with.”
Fifty-Seven
The distant drumbeat kept Rosa awake more than the pain. Suffocating black notes against a red sky. Her heartbeat. Why a heartbeat if no blood coursed through her veins? She hid in that bleak humour, a shield against the metal slicing her flesh and joints bent out of shape. At least someone had removed the silvered sword, for whatever that was worth.
Gusting wind turned sweat cold. Rosa’s eyelids fluttered. Red sky turned blue. The thump of her heart gave way to angry, broken voices. The Hayadra Grove stretched away before her, alabaster trees yielding to crowds cordoned behind soldiers’ tabards and unmoving kraikons.
Far beneath her dangling feet, another kraikon toiled, fashioning a pyre of white logs about her gibbet’s base. The cloying scent of fresh sap sweetened what shallow breaths the mooring spikes allowed.
“How easily tradition fades.” The man in the feathered domino mask and battered velvet jacket was less a physical presence than a stain upon the grass. Neither kraikons nor crowd paid him any heed. “These trees were a gift to Lumestra. Now they’ll birth the flames to swallow you whole. I doubt the goddess would have approved.”
The sun emerged from behind a cloud, and cast a vast, bird-winged shadow behind the man. Rosa’s questions died on a parched throat. She’d seen him before. The dance on the autumn path. In Malachi’s bedchamber. How had she forgotten?
“Are you ready to come with me?” asked the Raven. “There’s so little here for you now. Immolation is not a kind way to pass, even for an eternal. I can spirit you away from the fire, and from the Dark rushing close behind. But you have to ask.”
“Why?” she gasped.
He offered a low, formal bow. “Because that’s how it must be.”
Rosa closed her eyes, overcome by shame. Kas. What would she say if she met him in the mists of Otherworld? Could she confess how badly she’d failed him? How she’d been used?
“No.”
The Raven tilted his head. “A shame. I commend the day to you. Looks like it’ll be a warm one.”
He vanished like a shadow in sunlight. Rosa let her eyes fall closed and retreated into the red. Where she belonged.
“I’m sorry, high proctor,” said Lilyana. “I didn’t know where else to go. They’ll be watching my father’s house. King’s Gate is sealed . . . The docks are thick with soldiers. I . . .”
She broke off. Sevaka glanced across the foundry’s loading yard, embarrassed less by Lilyana’s distress, and more at the part she’d played in causing it. Was there anything more useless than courage found too late?
Courage. That was a joke. Only her grip on the sword stopped her from shaking. Braxov had it together more than she did. Even Sidara’s watchful composure put her to shame.
Elzar locked the slatted iron gate and set a hand on Lilyana’s shoulder. “Hush, lady. You’ve chosen the best from a series of poor choices. You shall have shelter however long I can offer it.”
“Why’s it so quiet?” Constans’ brow furrowed in thought. “Where is everyone?”
The boy was right, Sevaka realised. She’d been to the foundry on naval business many times, and it had never been less than a hive of activity. Now, the chainways were still, the forges silent. The interior, normally so brightly lit by hissing magic, was pitch dark. Even the air felt different. No longer thick and suffocating, it held the sharp acidic tang of cooling metal.
“I sent them home. Better that way.”
“Then you know what’s happening?” asked Lilyana.
“Some of it. Enough to be worried.”
“We won’t impose upon you for long,” said Sevaka. “My old ship – the Triumphal – lies at anchor. If I can get word to them . . .”
Elzar shook his head. “You needn’t worry about me, young lady. My fate was decided some time ago.” He stared briefly over her shoulder and bundled the children towards the inner door. “Inside. Quickly.”
Sevaka peered back through the gate. A triple column of soldiers in Freemont uniforms were marching through the empty street. A towering kraikon kept effortless pace alongside. She dragged Elzar out of sight.
Lilyana’s face tightened. “They’ve found us.”
“That all depends on who they want to arrest first,” hissed Elzar. “Go! Head for my workshop at the top of the second tower.”
Lilyana ran to join her children. Sevaka lingered, unwilling to leave the old proctor alone.
A gauntleted fist hammered on the gate. “High Proctor Ilnarov! You are called before the Council on a charge of aiding a fugitive. You will open these gates!”
“You know this man?” murmured Elzar.
“Captain Farran. Of my mother’s hearthguard.” At last, Sevaka’s thoughts caught up with her ears. “Wait. Aiding and abetting one fugitive. That crack about your fate being decided. That wasn’t pious gabble, was it?”
“One moment, captain! I seem to have misplaced the key!” Elzar lowered his voice to a whisper. “I may have freed Lord Akadra from the provosts.”
“Viktor? Viktor’s here?”
“About four-fifths of him. I left him sleeping. He’s in a bad way.”
A bronze hand closed over the top of the gate. A wail of tortured metal filled the air. Elzar touched a hand to his control amulet. His scowl gave way to a horrified grimace.
“It’s not working. That kraikon won’t obey my commands!”
The gate’s upper edge peeled back. A hinge exploded from brickwork in a shower of dust. Elzar remained rooted in place, his lips working restlessly.
“My own trick used against me! Someone’s altered the enchantment!”
The second of four hinges tore free. The gate shook. Sevaka grabbed Elzar by the collar and shoved him towards the inner door. With a last glance at the trembling gate, she limped after him.
The gate struck cobbles with a jarring clang. The kraikon lumbered into the loading yard.
“Move it!” bellowed Farran. Impatience coursed through his veins. If Marek could go to the dogs, so could any of them. Malachi Reveque wasn’t the only one with a family. “Drag them out by the heels if you must!”
Hearthguard flooded through the ruined gateway, swords out. Sergeant Volarn hung back, her face haunted by reluctance.
“I saw children. What about them?”
“Malachi Reveque’s brats? They’re on the list. They come with us.”
“She’s not sending them to the gallows too?”
Farran glared at her. “Why? Do you want me to tell Lady Kiradin you were asking?”
Volarn blanched, and no wonder.
“I don’t like it either,” Farran murmured. “Pray the kernclaw gets them first. Kinder on everyone.”
Apara clung to the soot-clogged rafters and wondered again how she was to find Viktor Akadra in the labyrinthine foundry. The place was a mass of vaults, forges and ratway tunnels – to say nothing of the stowage crates and half-finished kraikons looming through the shadows. She could search for days and still not find him.
The assault on her senses made it all the worse. Not the darkness. She was no stranger to that. The panoply of echoes from running feet, the heat rising from the seething vats. She didn’t care for it at all, and the raven-cloak liked it far less. Its voices squawked and fussed at the edge of her hearing, making a difficult search far worse.
A clatter of metal echoed up from below, chased along by a child’s yelp. Apara shifted position, grasping for purchase on the motionless chainway as she scoured the gantry below.
There. A smudge of filthy white cloth in the gloom. A woman hauling a young boy to his feet. And behind, a man hurrying a girl up a scuffed stairway.
It was exactly what she needed. One fugitive to draw out another.
Letting go of the chainway, Apara spread her raven-cloak wide.
Sevaka steadied herself against the wall and gulped down stifling air. Whatever good Sidara had done the previous night had been rapidly undone through exertion. The heat from the smelting pit didn’t help. Even with the metal dulled to a red smoulder, it sucked the breath from her lungs and dampened her clothes with sweat.
Elzar shook his head and flailed angrily at the air. “Stealing my krai-kons! Twisting their enchantment! It goes against all tradition!”
That, Sevaka decided, was the very least of their worries. “There must be some that’ll take your commands! This is the bloody foundry!”
Voices sounded behind. Sevaka twisted around. Farran’s kraikon stood silhouetted in the loading yard doorway. Hearthguards streamed past, spreading out through the maze of forges and smelting pits.
She pushed clear of the wall and limped towards Elzar. “Come on, old man. Keep moving!”
He gave no sign of hearing. Just stood there between the wall and the smelting pit with both hands gripped to his useless control amulet.
“Hold fast!” bellowed a deep voice behind.
With faltering heart, Sevaka turned about. Two hearthguard bore down.
The nearest straightened in surprise. “Lady Sevaka? But you’re . . . dead?”
“Then leave my corpse be.”
He shook his head. “Can’t do that, my lady. Orders.”
“Yes. I can imagine my mother being very clear.”
Dredging forth her last strength, Sevaka sprang. Steel sparked as she battered a sword aside. She hacked down. A hearthguard screamed and fell at her feet.
The second stepped over the body of the first. Sevaka threw herself under his blade, half-stumbling, half-falling as her trembling leg gave way. Her shoulder took the man in the chest, slamming him back against the smelting pit’s guard rail.
A brief cry. A desperate scrabbling hand. Then he was gone.
All but overcome, Sevaka fell to hands and knees. The kraikon started forward from the doorway. Three hearthguard advanced in a loose line behind.
The ground shook, slow and rhythmic at first, but with increasing speed. A new kraikon barrelled out of the darkness. Chains scattering from its lowered shoulders, it swept the advancing hearthguard aside and crashed into its twin. Fists slammed down in thunderous blows, the impact ringing out like church bells.
“Edvard will keep his sibling at bay, but he’s the only one I’ve got.” Elzar stooped and helped Sevaka to her feet. “The rest are damaged hulks or unfinished lumps.”
Sevaka coughed into her hand. Bloody spittle gleamed. “So keep moving.”
A scream rang out.
The man screamed as the raven-cloak tore into him. His back struck the guard rail. Then he was gone into the gloom beyond the gantry.
“Braxov!”
Grimy white skirts swirled as the woman spun around. One hand pushed the girl behind her. The other scraped a sword clear of a battered scabbard. The point wove and dipped. Her voice held no such uncertainty.
“Sidara! Constans! Run!”
Metal clattering beneath their feet, the children broke for the far stairway.
The woman moved to block the gantry. “You’ll not have my children!”
Raven-cloak swirling around her, Apara darted aside. The woman’s blade hissed past. Counterblow came as instinct. Claws flashed out. The woman shrieked and fell to her knees, sword abandoned and hands clasped to her face. Blood oozed between her fingers.
The raven-cloak croaked its triumph.
Apara kicked the sword over the gantry’s edge.
“Mother!”
Sidara skidded to a halt on the stairs and reversed course. The woman shuffled along the gantry, waving blindly at her daughter. “Sidara! Go! Keep Constans safe!”
Blue eyes daring Apara to approach, the girl tugged at her mother’s shoulder.
A child made for a better lure. Steeling her heart, Apara beckoned. “Come to me, girl, and I’ll let your mother live.”
Sidara glared at her unblinking. “Raven take you first!”
Bitter laughter swelled in Apara’s chest. “He already has. Now come here!”
She lunged, fingers grasping for Sidara’s wrist.
The girl flinched away. A furious scream tore free of her lips. Searing golden light exploded in the dark.
Viktor convulsed. Blankets scattering, he fell from the chair. Insubstantial dreams dissipated as sore muscles hauled him upright. What had woken him? He had a sense of a bright light, or the strike of a bell. But the more Viktor reached for answers, the less certain he became.
He cast about. Elzar’s workshop. Everything flooded back. Hargo. The provosts. Rosa’s accusations. Truth and lies intermingled. Like everything in the Republic.
He flexed his limbs. There was pain, but pain was to be expected. But there was no rush of blood to darken Elzar’s imperfect bandages. It would do.
Screams echoed up from below. The strike of metal on metal. A child’s sobs. The harsh screech of birds.
Viktor’s breath misted as his shadow stirred. He let it rise.
“Come along, my old friend,” he murmured. “We’ve slept too long.”
The sonorous chimes of the kraikon-battle ended with a screech of tearing metal. Golden magic arced away into the rafters. Farran’s kraikon, or Edvard? Sevaka had no way to know. Barked commands and running footsteps grew louder with every passing moment, just as Elzar grew slower with every step. They’d be caught, and sooner rather than later.
Unless something changed.
Her legs buckled as she reached for the banister. Brow streaming with sweat, Sevaka hauled herself into an approximation of upright. Elzar halted at the half-landing and stumbled back down the steps. Weathered hands reached for hers. She waved him away.
“I’m slowing you down,” she said. “Leave me. Find Viktor.”
He stopped, bushy brows knitting with indecision. “They’ll kill you.”
She laughed, the sound more gasp than mirth. “You don’t know my mother. She’ll want to lecture me first. Go.”
Elzar gave a sharp nod and fled up the stairs.
Running footsteps grew nearer. Shadows took on ephemeral shape. Sevaka cast down her sword and folded her arms. “Here I am. You can take me to my mother now.”
“Get back here, gutterling!” bellowed Farran.
The boy ignored him and ran full-tilt across the gantry. Farran caught him on the threshold to the next hallway. He snaked his hand about the boy’s mouth and dragged him back off his feet.
“Got you, you little . . .”
The brat bit down hard on the heel of his hand. Howling in pain, Farran cuffed the boy about the head. The child hit the floor. Defiant eyes blazed through tears.
Farran grabbed the brat again – by the collar this time – and yanked him to his feet. “You want to live to see daylight?”
The sullen stare was his only reply.
Volarn stepped from the stairway. “Everything under control, captain?”
“You being funny, sergeant?”
“No, sir.” Her eyes dipped briefly to the boy. “Looks a handful. The high proctor’s still here somewhere. We’ve got Lady Sevaka. Kernclaw’s playing with the rest.”
Farran shuddered. Orders were orders, but just because her ladyship had commanded he work alongside the vranakin didn’t mean he had to like it. Even thinking about her made the shadows lengthen. “Any sign of Akadra?”
“Not a glimpse. Maybe the kernclaw already got him.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Farran tried to ignore the chill settling in his bones. All of a sudden, he longed for the daylight. “All right. We’ll take this one out and leave her to it. You know Akadra’s reputation. I don’t want to run into him.”
“Too late,” rumbled a new voice. “He has already found you.”
The shadows pulsed. F
arran didn’t even have time to scream.
Viktor let the bodies fall. Constans stared at him with dark, disbelieving eyes. The lad had courage, at least.
“Uncle Viktor?”
Viktor gathered the trembling boy into an embrace. “Where’s Malachi? Where’s your father?”
“They came for him. Uncle Josiri too. We had to run.”
A swell of rage fought the cold of Viktor’s shadow. So he’d only been the first? Viktor saw no need to ask who “they” were. Not with two of Ebigail Kiradin’s hearthguard lying dead at his feet.
“And your mother? Your sister?”
Constans pointed back the way he’d come.
Viktor released the boy and slid the sword from the dead captain’s scabbard.
“Stay close,” he rumbled.
The girl was halfway along the gantry by the time Apara’s vision cleared. She had her mother’s left arm across her shoulders. The right still clasped a hand to an injured face.
Blinking away blue-black splotches, Apara soared across the intervening span. A thrust of her elbow knocked the mother clear. Then she had one hand across the girl’s mouth, and her claws against her throat.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she breathed, “but I’ll slice you open if you do that again. Do you understand me?”
Sidara nodded. Her quick, shallow breaths rushed over Apara’s fingers. Apara tried not to think about the threat she’d just made, and to whom. She let her hand fall.
“I didn’t mean to,” the girl whimpered. “Don’t hurt my mother.”
“Viktor Akadra!” shouted Apara. “I know you’re here! Show yourself, and I’ll let the child go!”
How far she’d get with the foundry full of Freemont hearthguard was another matter, but that was hardly Apara’s concern.
“Well, Lord Akadra! What’s it to be?”
The mother lowered her hand from her face. Ragged gouges ran from chin to brow across her right cheek. “Please,” she begged. “Let my daughter go. You have me. I won’t fight.”
Apara brushed the girl’s cheek. “As long as I hold her, I have you both. I’m guessing a man of Lord Akadra’s reputation won’t easily pass that up.”