by Traci Chee
Even now, Tanin didn’t allow herself the satisfaction of a smile. Smiling was for victors, and she’d had victory snatched from her grasp too many times to believe it would come easily to her now.
But she’d been waiting for this moment. She’d known Sefia and Archer would return to finish their assassination of the Master Politician.
She just had to make sure that this time, they succeeded.
Together, they raced across the castle walls and disappeared into a tower.
“Director,” Tanin whispered, “if I may be excused?”
“Now?”
“The queen has been gone a long time. I think I should check on her.”
He didn’t bother turning around. “Go, and be quick about it.”
Tanin left through the antechamber, passing the candidates on guard in the hall.
With Stonegold dead, the Directorship would be vacant, and since she’d shadowed his every move since the death of the First and was privy to every scheme, there would be no one more suited to take his place than Tanin.
She’d already had opportunities to kill him, of course, but if the rest of the Guard was to accept her as Director, her innocence had to be out of the question, her alibi inviolate even to the Sight. If there was a single shred of doubt, their Master Soldier, Braca, would seize control of the organization and have her executed for treachery.
No, she’d had to wait. She had to lay the blame elsewhere. She had to retain the loyalty of every division: the Soldiers, the Librarians, the Administrators. As their military leader, Braca would assume command of the Alliance.
She would be the public face of the first union of all Five Kingdoms, and Tanin, the Director of the Guard, would control her from the shadows.
It would be as it should have been before Stonegold usurped Tanin’s place.
Tanin stalked the corridors. She peered into empty chambers. She slunk through the kitchens, the courtyards, the halls.
She heard them before she saw them, whispering in one of the stairwells. She paused on the landing above, listening.
Sefia’s voice drifted up to her: “Where do you think he is?”
He. Stonegold. Tanin had been correct—they were going to try to kill him again.
Except she’d vowed that he would die at her hand.
“Would he be in the council room?” Archer asked.
In the tense silence, Tanin peered around the curve of the stairwell. Wearing an eye patch to cover the injury she’d received when fighting the First, Sefia was staring through the windows at the battle on the bay. The resisters were fleeing south, pursued by the Alliance’s swift scouts.
Archer stood beside her. As before, he had two weapons: a revolver and a sword.
Perfect. The sword was what she needed.
“If I know Stonegold,” she said softly, stepping around the corner, “and I think I do, he’ll be in the throne room, gloating.”
The attack came, predictably: a burst of magic, a knife flung through the air.
With reflexes honed by her training with the First, Tanin ducked, redirecting the knife into the curved wall, where it pinged off the stones and went flying back at Sefia.
Archer went to push her out of the way, exposing the hilt of his sword.
That was all the opening Tanin needed. She teleported, appearing on his other side. Swiftly, she grabbed his blade from its scabbard and darted away.
She led them into the servants’ passages that wound throughout the castle, up and down tight stairwells, until she was certain they were close enough to the throne room to make it on their own.
Then, when they were behind a corner, she waved her arms, reappearing in the empty antechamber.
Amid the sliding paper screens and hand-carved chairs of Oxscinian hardwood, Tanin slipped on a pair of gloves and plucked a tin, no bigger than a case of powder, from her vest. Inside was a sponge soaked in a transparent poison.
She’d gotten the idea from Detano, of all people. To save his little king, he’d needed to conceal a murder, and to do that, he’d needed a poison that would distort a corpse until all its distinguishing marks were unrecognizable, even to Illuminators.
She would do the same to Stonegold.
Tanin ran the sponge along the weapon’s cutting edges and returned the sponge to its case. Then she removed her gloves, turning them inside out to avoid contact with the poison, and clipped the case closed.
Taking Archer’s sword from the chair, she opened the double doors and strode into the throne room.
Stonegold hadn’t moved from his place at the windows. Out on the bay, the resisters had disappeared from sight. The remaining Royal Navy vessels were being boarded, their captains relieved of their command. In the evening light, the smoke-filled sky was a red haze, silhouetting his girth.
King of Everica. Master Politician. Director of the Guard.
But not for much longer.
Quietly, Tanin locked and barred the doors.
At the slight sound, Stonegold turned, his expression pinched with irritation. “Took you long enough. Where is she?”
That lazy voice. That condescending tone.
She’d never have to hear it again.
In an instant, she’d teleported across the room. She was quick, as her Master had taught her. Archer’s sword sank hilt-deep into Stonegold’s broad chest.
At Detano’s swearing-in ceremony, she’d promised herself that this was how Stonegold would die. It gave her no small satisfaction to know she was a woman who kept her promises.
Immediately, she stepped back, checking her clothing for spots of blood.
Stonegold looked down, his eyes widening as he saw the sword.
The old Tanin would have gloated.
But the new Tanin merely watched as Stonegold opened his mouth as if to speak, though no words came out. The poison was fast, eating away at his clothing, his skin, his fat, his muscles and bones.
He screamed and fell back, Archer’s sword protruding from his rapidly deteriorating corpse.
There was a ruckus beyond the antechamber. The candidates had heard Stonegold’s cry.
With a smile, Tanin lifted her arms and teleported away.
CHAPTER 30
Close to the End
The scream was followed by a hammering sound—bang, bang, bang—like a battering ram.
Sefia and Archer raced toward the noise, through the winding servants’ passageways, until they burst into a hall of glass and polished stone. At one end stood a throne; at the other, a set of great barricaded doors that strained their hinges with every blow from the other side.
Bang! Bang!
One bank of windows overlooked the harbor, where the Alliance soldiers were disembarking from their blue ships, marching into the capital waving their flags.
By the windows lay a body. It wore a gold crown set with five blue jewels.
Stonegold. Director of the Guard.
As Sefia approached, she could see that much of his torso was gone, eaten away as if by acid, with winking gold buttons here and there among the sizzling flesh and deteriorating bones, and Archer’s sword tilting out of the corpse like a broken mast.
Archer pulled out his blade, examining the steel for traces of poison.
“She framed us,” Sefia said, kneeling. They could still get what they came for. Gingerly, she began picking through the king’s pockets—or what remained of them—searching for the vault key.
Her hands were going for Stonegold’s neck, where a gold chain was visible through a part in his collar, when Tanin burst into the throne room with a squad of soldiers in tow.
No, not soldiers. They had scarred necks. Candidates.
Sefia’s fingers closed around the chain and she gave it a tug as she stood. The links parted, and a little key came loose from the remnants of the king’s
ruined uniform. Quickly, she spooled it into her palm, hoping Tanin hadn’t noticed.
But Tanin’s silver eyes were on the sword in Archer’s hand. “You killed the Director,” she rasped.
Before either Sefia or Archer could protest, the candidates came rushing toward them, quick and agile. Bullets sped through the air. Tanin disappeared and reappeared between them in an instant, the First’s bloodsword in her hands.
Archer’s blade clashed against Tanin’s as he and Sefia were driven apart. Summoning her magic, Sefia pushed Tanin away from him, deflected bullets, wrenched candidates aside.
At last, the woman turned on Sefia. While the candidates flooded toward Archer, Tanin advanced, bloodsword extended.
Sefia expected the woman to speak—to taunt her, to say something. But Tanin was silent as her copper blade, tinted with red in the last light of the sunset. She attacked. Sefia dodged, still pulling candidates away from Archer.
But they kept slipping her magic. They swarmed Archer, swords flashing. He backed toward the throne, parrying and countering, his blade finding wrists and exposed legs, his bullets finding shoulders and sides.
But he wasn’t killing anyone.
A bullet grazed his shoulder. He faltered.
Thrusting Tanin aside, Sefia teleported to him. She landed, shakily, on the steps to the throne, with the candidates closing in.
Archer’s arms went around her.
Oxscini might have been lost. Four kingdoms might have fallen to the Guard. But now she and Archer had the key to the vault.
They could strike back.
The streams of the Illuminated world ran before her like a flood, and with a wave of her arms, she teleported them away.
* * *
• • •
Once they’d retrieved the explosives from their cabin aboard the Brother, they appeared with a soft thud beside a bronze statue, its face stern. All around him, Archer could smell the odor of varnished wood, tanned leather, ancient paper. From the stained glass ceiling, dusky light filtered through the tall shelves, casting shadows like prison bars along the elaborately patterned floor.
So this was the Library.
Tentatively, Archer reached out to touch the spine of a book on one of the lower shelves. The leather felt warm and supple to the touch, almost as if it were alive.
Between the books, he could see a gold light at the other end of the room. Perhaps one of those electric lamps Sefia had told him about?
There was the creak of wood, followed by the soft swoosh of velvet on stone.
They weren’t alone here.
Erastis, Sefia mouthed, pointing.
Archer nodded. She’d told him the Master Librarian frequented the Library at night. He’d just hoped they’d be lucky.
Sefia tapped her brow, above her eye patch. I have an idea. She pointed at him, then at the marble floor. Stay here.
Cocking his head, he touched his temple, asking for her plan.
Sefia motioned with her arms. She was going to disappear, and when she returned, she’d have something to neutralize the Librarian.
Quickly, he mimed planting the bombs nestled in his pack.
Putting her finger to her lips, she nodded. As long as you do it quietly.
Archer reached for his pack as Sefia teleported away, leaving only a puff of air in her wake. He backed into the shadows, away from the golden light, and, pacing up and down the aisles, he found darkened corners to hide the explosives he and Keon had made: canisters of gunpowder and blackrock dust linked to firing mechanisms he’d stripped from revolvers. After planting each bomb, he very carefully pulled back the hammers, listening to them click into place.
One good jolt and the hammers would hit the firing pins, detonating the explosives and sending the whole vaulted annex up in flames.
He hoped.
There were only two bombs left in his pack when a voice made him halt in the shadows: “Who’s there?”
Stashing his pack among the shelves, Archer ducked as the lantern light flared. Crouching, he peeked through a set of blue-bound books. Erastis was only twenty feet away, squinting into the shadows.
He was old, with skin as brown and wrinkled as a walnut. His hand shook as he held the lantern, making the light flicker and jump over his long velvet robes.
“Is that you, Tolem?” the Master Librarian called. “Your Master won’t appreciate you snooping around here.”
Tolem? The Apprentice Administrator that had attacked them at the messengers’ post in Jahara. Archer remembered round spectacles and an unruly crop of dark curls.
Erastis shuffled forward, forcing Archer to retreat around a shelf, toward a set of carpeted steps.
He couldn’t see the Librarian anymore, but he could hear him stalking slowly along the aisles. “Or perhaps you’re not Tolem at all,” Erastis said. “Perhaps you’re someone with more malicious intent.”
Silently, Archer backed up to the stairs. Even here, the walls were lined with books. Enough books for Sefia to read for the rest of her life and never run out of new passages to discover.
He felt a twinge of regret.
Through the stone banister that edged the steps, Archer could see the light of Erastis’s lantern bobbing through the Library. He just had to evade him long enough for Sefia to return.
But as Archer reached the upper landing, the Master Librarian appeared at the bottom of the steps. Archer tried to duck out of sight, but before he could move, an invisible force gripped him tight and flung him sideways over the stone railing.
He felt the air rushing past him.
He felt his body strike the marble floor.
Wincing, he pulled himself into a crouch.
But then he froze. He couldn’t move. Erastis had caught him again.
Archer struggled as the Master Librarian approached, unhurried, with a wary look in his eyes. “Who are you?” His gaze flicked to Archer’s throat. “Not one of ours?”
When Archer said nothing, Erastis tilted his head curiously. “Archer?” There was a pause. “Sefia . . . is she here too?”
Still, Archer refused to speak.
The Master Librarian padded forward until Archer could see every cloud in his rheumy eyes. “Where is she?” When Archer didn’t reply, Erastis sighed. “Never mind.”
Wearily, the old man sat down in a wooden chair, which creaked under his weight as he set the lantern on the floor beside him. “I’d hoped to never meet you,” he said finally.
After everything Sefia had told him about the Librarian, Archer should have guessed that Erastis would say something unexpected, but still, the words caught him off guard. “Why?” he asked.
“Because I knew if I met you, we’d end up here, as adversaries.” The Master Librarian sighed. “And I’d hoped you’d run instead of fight.”
“We tried to run. It didn’t work.”
“You could have disappeared at any time in the last four months. Sefia could have teleported you back to Deliene or any of the hideaways from her days with the Locksmith. The two of you would have been alone, but you would have been free of your destiny. Instead, you’re here. The Red War is coming to an end. And so is your time in this world. But I suppose that’s how destiny works.”
Archer swallowed. “I don’t have an army. I can’t win any wars. And if I don’t do that, I can’t be the boy from the legends.”
“You’ll find a way, I’m sure.”
“Out of it?”
“Into it.” Erastis smiled sadly. “What are you doing here, Archer? There must be a better place for you to be right now, so close to the end.”
Archer was about to say that it wasn’t the end. But then he realized it didn’t matter. End, middle, beginning. Wherever he was in his own story, all that mattered was that he was with Sefia.
Reaching for a tasseled rope on the oth
er side of the room, Erastis used his magic to give it a pull. Nothing happened. Was it attached to a bell somewhere in the depths of the mountain? Whom had he summoned? “Now tell me,” the Librarian continued. “What were you planning?”
CHAPTER 31
Past the Edges of the Stars
Rucksack in hand, Sefia landed on all fours in the center of the Administrator’s Office. With her was the Book, which she’d retrieved from Aljan’s quarters after leaving Archer in the Library.
Dim lights flickered along the curved walls, illuminating two chairs and a single wooden table in the center of the room. She shivered as the cold of the mountain seemed to press in around her.
She hoped her plan would work. Erastis was, by all accounts, the most powerful Illuminator the Guard had. In a fight, she didn’t think she could beat him without hurting him.
And she didn’t want to hurt him.
Tightening her hands on the straps of her rucksack, she headed for the laboratories. The chill corridors were silent as she passed room after room of specimens floating in jars, metal tables and glass beakers, cases of instruments, walls filled with wide drawers.
There was no sign of either Dotan, the Master Administrator, or his Apprentice.
At last, she found what she was looking for: the apothecary. In the center stood a table laden with weights and a scale, and beside it sat a large iron sphere, almost as high as her waist, with a strange glass contraption inside. Two of the apothecary’s walls were crammed, floor to ceiling, with tiny, neatly categorized drawers: aconite, arnica . . . bryonia . . . chamomile . . . Along the other two walls were glass cabinets that held neatly ordered bottles, all their labels facing out.
Quietly, Sefia opened the cabinet doors, searching for the compound she needed.
Nightmaker—the poison Tanin had slathered on Frey’s and Aljan’s locks, the poison that had stripped Sefia of her powers for weeks.