“No, don’t,” said Caina, a flicker of alarm going through her emotional sense. “Don’t. He won’t be alone. Master Alchemists rarely go anywhere without a bodyguard of Immortals. And he’ll have his own sorcerous powers, to say nothing of the powers his nagataaru will give him.”
Kylon said nothing.
“Kylon,” said Caina. “I know what you’re thinking. I know you want to avenge Thalastre. Believe me, I understand.”
“Do you?” said Kylon, harsher than he intended.
She met his gaze without blinking. “I do.”
He remembered Corvalis Aberon and felt a flicker of shame.
“I will help you make Rolukhan pay for what he has done, I promise,” said Caina. “But I don’t want you to get killed doing it.” She took a deep breath. “I…I tried to do that to myself, when I first came to Istarinmul. I took greater and greater risks, and part of me hoped that I would get killed. Sometimes I still think that way. But Corvalis wouldn’t have wanted me to die. Forgive me if this is impudent, but I don’t think Thalastre would have wanted that for you either.”
“No,” said Kylon, looking away. “No, she wouldn’t have.” He looked at the dead men and shook his head. “We have to get out of here.”
“Aye,” said Caina. “I imagine corpses turning up unexpectedly would inspire questions even in the Ring of Cyrica.”
“They would,” said Kylon.
“Likely Ikhardin has fled back to Rolukhan,” said Caina. “They will soon return with reinforcements. The sooner we are gone from here, the better.” She looked at him. “Is there another way out of here?”
“Aye,” said Kylon. “The delivery ramp. When wild beasts are sent to the games, the Wazir of Games doesn’t wish to herd them through the aisles. Eaten guests are bad for business. They’re brought to the ramp and taken into the galleries directly.”
“Good,” said Caina. “Let’s go.”
He nodded and headed into the corridors. Memories flickered through his mind. He remembered Calvarium and Catekharon and Caer Magia, all the places he had listened to Caina and followed her counsel. As a younger man, the man he had been before the battle of Marsis, he would have laughed at the thought of following the lead of a female spy of the Ghosts.
Though Caina was usually right about this sort of thing.
Kylon led her to the delivery ramp. A heavy wooden door bound with a massive iron locked sealed it shut. Caina produced a set of slender tools from the interior of her robe and picked the lock in moments. Kylon pushed open the door a few feet, letting sunlight fall into the gloom of the passage, and they hurried up the ramp and into the street. They emerged near the rows of apartment buildings and small shops that filled this part of the Cyrican Quarter. The street was deserted, but Kylon suspected that would not last long.
“This way,” said Caina, and she led the way into the maze of alleys between the whitewashed walls of the apartment towers. They walked for ten minutes, taking turns at random, and at last emerged onto another street. Kylon saw that they had gone east, deeper into the city, and the houses here looked older and more weathered.
“The Old Quarter,” said Caina. “I doubt we were followed here.”
“Where are we going?” said Kylon.
“I have safe houses scattered throughout the city,” said Caina. “We’ll use one. We can give you a disguise, a new alias. I’m afraid the Exile will have to disappear, though. Rolukhan already knows who you are, and if he is working with Cassander, we might have the Silent Hunters on our tails.”
“Silent Hunters?” said Kylon.
“The Umbarian Order’s assassins,” said Caina. “The Umbarian magi have a method of writing spells onto living flesh, and the Silent Hunters can use those spells to turn invisible.”
“You can sense sorcery,” said Kylon. “I imagine that wouldn’t work on you.”
He saw the brief flash of her smile. “A few of them found that out the hard way.”
“I suspect so,” said Kylon. “I will not object to leaving the Exile behind. I needed the money, but I suppose I have enough of it now.”
“How much did you make?” said Caina.
“About ninety thousand bezants.”
Her eyes got a little wide at that. “Ninety thousand?”
He shrugged. “I…thought I would hire mercenaries, or bribe guards to give me access to Rolukhan’s palace. I…admit I had not thought my way to a plan. I’ve never done this kind of thing before.”
“Fortunately, I have,” said Caina. “Is the money in a safe place?” He nodded. “We’ll disguise you first, and then find somewhere to hide it.”
He nodded, and then stopped.
“What is it?” said Caina.
“I don’t know,” said Kylon. “I sense…I think I sense a spell.” It hovered at the edge of his awareness, some form of sorcery he had not encountered before. It felt necromantic, yet different somehow. “It’s getting closer.”
“Damn it,” said Caina. A knife appeared in her hand, so fast that Kylon barely followed the movement. “We…”
Men came around the corner, armor flashing in the afternoon sunlight.
Kylon had never seen soldiers quite like them. At first he thought they wore cuirasses of overlapping steel plates, with more plates upon their arms and hands. The exposed flesh was written with scars and sigils, and Kylon saw that each man had the sigil of the Umbarian Order, a winged skull, carved into their foreheads. They radiated potent arcane sorcery, spells of strengthening and warding.
The armor plates had been grafted to their skin. Their emotional auras washed over Kylon, and they felt…wrong, as if every trace of compassion and mercy had been cut from their minds, leaving only a cold, relentless void.
Caina’s lips pressed into a thin line.
“What are they?” said Kylon.
“Adamant Guards,” she said. “The elite soldiers of the Umbarian Order. They’re augmented with sorcery, made stronger and faster.” She took a deep breath. “They’re at least as strong as Ikhardin.”
A half-dozen of the Adamant Guards walked towards them, their expressions blank and cold. That was bad. Kylon had not been able to overcome Ikhardin, and he had only been one man. Kylon did not think he could defeat a half-dozen men with Ikhardin’s strength and speed, especially with those metal carapaces grafted to their torsos.
A dozen tactics flitted through his mind, and he discarded each of them.
“We should run,” said Kylon.
Caina nodded, and as they turned to go, a woman appeared behind the Adamant Guards. She was a little under twenty, Istarish with brown skin and black hair. She wore only a ragged gray tunic, her bare feet slapping against the hard-packed earth of the alley.
Her eyes burned with crimson flames.
Chapter 6: Razor
The Sifter contemplated the demonslayer.
It regarded the material world through its stolen form. The demonslayer was a mortal woman, short and lean with hard blue eyes and a variety of weapons concealed in her clothing. She wore the garb of a male human, no doubt employed as a disguise, but material disguises could not fool the Sifter.
Not when it could see her destiny line, the thread she had woven into the tapestry of time.
For her thread was long and thick. Her life had left a profound influence upon the threads around her, thousands of them, millions of them. Entire sections of the tapestry would have been destroyed if not for her, millions upon millions of lives saved.
The Sifter regretted that it had not encountered her earlier. If it had burned her and consumed her life earlier, how many more lives would have burned with her! Still, the Sifter glimpsed the possibilities that lay before her destiny thread, and would content itself with burning her future to ashes.
One of the destiny threads she had saved stood next to her. It was a human male, five or six years her senior, armed only with a steel broadsword. His thread had been profoundly affected by the demonslayer, had been pulled to follow her pat
h more than once. The Sifter noted that the male possessed powers of water and air sorcery. A powerful enough sorcerer could banish the Sifter to the netherworld, but it doubted the male possessed enough strength to accomplish the feat.
Just as well. The male’s thread was intertwined with the demonslayer’s, so it was appropriate they should burn together.
And yet…
As the Sifter considered the demonslayer’s destiny thread, it realized that she had entered the netherworld and returned more than once. That was extremely rare. Furthermore, she had faced enfleshed spirits several times and survived. The marks upon her path were plain to see.
Perhaps caution was required. The Sifter did not fear the demonslayer. It was older than her, older than Istarinmul, older than this world. The demonslayer could not harm it. And yet, the demonslayer was obviously clever. If the Sifter made an error, it would be banished back to the netherworld and it could not consume the demonslayer’s destiny line.
It wanted to devour her very much.
So it took a step past Cassander’s mutated soldiers and waited.
###
Caina hesitated, the throwing knife cold against her fingers, but the strange girl did not move.
Several facts penetrated her brain.
The girl was not breathing. That meant she was undead, bound by a necromantic spell. Or, more likely, she was possessed by some sort of spirit creature. Ricimer’s nagataaru had possessed his corpse after Caina had killed him, and the nagataaru hidden within poor Tarqaz had not manifested until Anburj had killed him.
Second, the girl’s eyes were burning, but Caina had not seen a fire like this before. Samnirdamnus’s eyes burned with smokeless yellow-orange flame, no matter what his guise, and the eyes of those possessed by the nagataaru flickered with shadow and purple fire. Caina had never seen crimson fire quite like this. It looked furious, hungry, though without the malice of the nagataaru.
Caina suspected the dead girl was possessed, but she could not sense the presence of spirits.
Fortunately, she knew someone who could.
“Kylon,” said Caina. “Is that a nagataaru?”
He shook his head, sword ready in his hand. “No. She’s possessed…but not a nagataaru. I’m not sure what kind of spirit. I think…I think it’s a fire elemental.”
“A fire elemental?” said Caina. The djinn were air elementals, which explained why Samnirdamnus sometimes called himself the Knight of Wind and Air. She had never seen a fire elemental before, but she had encountered an earth elemental, a spirit bound within the flesh of a slave girl. The elemental had been able to turn its victims to stone with a single glance.
It wasn’t hard to guess what kind of havoc a fire elemental could wreak.
The girl stared at her, head tilted.
“Who are you?” said Caina.
“I am the Sifter,” said the girl. Her voice was far deeper than a human voice, and seemed to vibrate oddly, adding a strange cadence and rhythm to her words.
“What do you want?” said Caina.
“You, Balarigar,” said the Sifter. “Surrender yourself to me, and I shall kill you quickly. Resist, and I shall slaughter any who stand in my path.” The burning eyes shifted to Kylon. “Starting with him.”
Caina looked around. They were in a narrow courtyard between four apartment buildings. Windows looked down from all four buildings, but one of them was falling into ruin, the whitewash crumbling away to reveal the hard-baked adobe beneath. The building was abandoned, which meant that Caina and Kylon could use it to escape.
She caught his eye and jerked her head at one of the second-story windows in the apartment building. “Remember when you tried to kill me in Marsis?”
Kylon blinked with confusion, and then nodded.
“This conversation is not relevant,” said the Sifter. “Your thread ends here, Balarigar, and your efforts to shift its termination shall have no effect upon the outcome.”
“Prove it,” said Caina, and she sprinted across the courtyard, Kylon racing alongside her. She felt a burst of sorcery, and Kylon shot forward, moving with the speed of the wind.
“Take her!” screamed the Sifter, the spirit’s roaring voice thundering across the courtyard. “Take her and bring her to me!”
Kylon jumped, soaring through the air, and landed in the ruined window, rolling over the sill. Caina sprinted forward and leaped, reaching for the window. She couldn’t possibly jump high enough to reach it, but Kylon reached down and caught her, his outstretched left hand clamping about her right forearm with superhuman strength. He pulled her through the window, and she slammed into him. Kylon stumbled, lost his balance, and landed on his back. Caina landed atop of him, her palms flat on the dusty floor on either side of his head.
For a moment the impact stole the breath from her, and she could not speak.
Kylon pushed her off as he surged to his feet, his sword flickering in his hand. He thrust out the window, and the blade slammed into an Adamant Guard just as the soldier struck the wall. The Order grafted steel to the flesh of their warriors, but they never grafted armor to their necks, likely due to the risk of strangulation. Kylon’s broadsword ripped into the Guard’s throat, and the soldier fell hard to the ground below. He stepped back, raising his bloody blade as Caina rolled to her feet and slammed the shutters closed.
“That won’t stop them for long,” said Kylon.
“The rooftop,” said Caina. “Quick. We’ll go from roof to roof.”
Kylon nodded and ran for the stairs. The apartment tower, like most of the tenements of Istarinmul, had been built around a central stairwell with a skylight overhead. The tower was crumbling into ruin, but the stairwell was still intact. They reached the fourth floor when Caina heard the door smash open, heard the Adamant Guards storm into the building.
Kylon ran faster, and Caina followed.
They reached the ninth floor and scrambled up a ladder onto the rooftop. Caina slammed the heavy trapdoor behind them and barred it. That would not hold the Adamant Guards for long, but it would slow them.
“Where now?” said Kylon.
“Rooftop to rooftop,” said Caina. “Make for the Emirs’ Quarter, and the mansion of the Lord Ambassador of the Empire.”
Kylon was already moving to the northeast. “Why?”
“Claudia Aberon Dorius is there,” said Caina, “and she is skilled at casting banishment spells. Perhaps she can banish the Sifter back to the netherworld.” Caina hated to drag Claudia into this. Claudia was pregnant, and bringing her near the Sifter would put her unborn child at risk.
“I remember,” said Kylon. “Lead on.”
Caina nodded, burst into a sprint, and leaped over the alley to the next apartment building.
They were two buildings away when the trapdoor burst open and the Adamant Guards sprinted in pursuit.
###
The Sifter watched the world around it, observing it through eyes wrought of time and spirit, rather than eyes of mere flesh.
The Adamant Guards were not important. The demonslayer could run, but she could not escape the Sifter. Every destiny line in Istarinmul, every thread in the tapestry, warped towards her, and it was a simple matter to follow them until the Sifter located Caina Amalas.
And then it would devour her.
The Sifter followed the destiny lines, its stolen face smiling at the pleasures ahead.
###
Morgant watched the drama on the rooftops. The afternoon sky was like a sheet of clear blue, but the shapes of the Balarigar and the Kyracian stood out against them like flecks of charcoal upon a white sheet. Not that anyone noticed. No one ever looked up. Escaping over the rooftops was clever.
Unfortunately for Caina and the Kyracian, the Adamant Guards were already in pursuit.
He hadn’t expected her to escape from the Kindred, and he didn’t expect her to escape the ifrit in the dead slave girl. Nonetheless, Caina had escaped from the Kindred and Ikhardin. Perhaps she would yet escape from the
ifrit that called itself the Sifter and the Adamant Guards.
He found himself admiring her boldness. Few women kept their heads in danger. Few men, for that matter. Perhaps she was strong enough to survive learning the secrets he carried.
Maybe she was strong enough to deserve his aid, to keep her alive until he decided if she could help him or not.
Morgant followed, keeping to the shadows.
###
Kylon grasped his power, calling the strength of water and the speed of wind to his limbs.
“We can’t jump that,” said Caina, looking at the wide alley between their current building and the next. “Go down. We’ll…”
“We can jump it,” said Kylon. “Keep running!”
She looked at him, her blue eyes wide and a little wild, and then nodded.
They sprinted to the edge of the roof and jumped. Caina’s own leap would have carried her perhaps a third of the way before she plummeted to her death. Kylon caught her around the waist, and his own momentum carried her the rest of way across. He landed hard, his legs flexing to absorb the impact, and Caina landed next to him, arms spinning as she fought to keep her balance. Kylon caught her arm, and she staggered to a halt.
“Good catch,” she said.
“Thanks,” said Kylon. “Go!”
She ran for the trapdoor atop the flat roof, and Kylon followed. Caina kicked open the trapdoor and scrambled down the stairs. A moment later she burst through the door to the street, and Kylon followed her.
She was breathing hard, but not nearly as hard as he might have expected.
“You’ve spent a lot of time running from people trying to kill you, haven’t you?” said Kylon.
Caina grinned over her shoulder at him, grim yet somehow fierce and wild, and kept running. Kylon followed her, watching over his shoulder for the Adamant Guards. Caina did a sudden right turn, darting into a narrow alley, and Kylon ran after her. He had acquired a basic knowledge of Istarinmul’s streets, but Caina’s was obviously far more extensive. Kylon thought they were still in the Old Quarter, but they might have veered back into the Cyrican Quarter. This damned city was a labyrinth of identical alleyways and crumbling tenements. A proper city, like New Kyre, had canals. How did the Istarish get anywhere without canals?
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