Rinwar was silent, but his mouth worked. His hand came up to grip Draken’s wrist. Finally he whispered, “Down … down.”
“Is there a dungeon here?” Tyrolean asked.
“Most of these old places have them.” The walls around the fireplace were black with ancient soot, and these windows had thick shutters rather than glass. It predated Ashwyc Palace, surely. Wyndam had existed when Monoea wasn’t a single country, but warring citystates filled with lords who abducted, tortured, and killed for power. This house belonged to the oldest family so it must have existed back then.
“Is it you at the head of this rebellion, then? You, Rinwar? Does it stop with you?”
Rinwar huffed air, drawing Draken’s eye. He moaned once more and fell limp. His eyes were wild and white in their death stare.
Faizen moaned. Her mouth worked and her eyelids fluttered. She swallowed and said wetly, “You’ve killed him. For this, at least, the King must die. If I’m fortunate, he already is dead.”
“That’s treason,” Draken growled, and not even very good treason.
“I would rather die a traitor to this crown than in service to it.”
Tyrolean tightened his grip and laid the blade under Faizen’s chin again. Unflappable, hard: “Your lord is dead. Save yourself, my lady.”
Draken met her wild eyes. “For your family, if nothing else.”
“There’s nothing left,” Faizen husked out.
“Your son. Your daughter. Soeben’s memory—”
“There’s nothing left! You’ve stolen them all!” Her tongue flicked over her quivering bottom lip, she drew a breath, and thrust her body forward.
Tyrolean kept the edges of his blade as thin as the edge of a fine Crown scroll. The gash it caused in her throat was brutal, quick, and gaping. Maybe even she didn’t expect it to happen so quickly; gaping lips and flaring nostrils tried to draw futile breath. Blood gushed down her front and over Tyrolean’s arm.
Tyrolean let her down, gently, his back bent at an awkward angle. She tumbled to the floor as her heart pumped its last, one fist curled by her pale face.
It was several heartbeats before Draken remembered to breathe.
Tyrolean set the blade next to her on the floor, rose to his full height, and pulled his bracer off. His sleeve was soaked with hot blood, stinking of rank salt like the sea. Draken wondered if there would ever be a night he didn’t fall asleep with that scent in his nostrils, with death in his lungs.
“Tyrolean.”
“We must find the King. We must end this.” Tyrolean cut his bloody sleeve away with his knife.
“This was supposed to be a godsdamned diplomatic mission. We had a pact, Rinwar and I. I could have stopped this.” The tinge of desperation stained his voice. Draken wondered where it came from. He felt vacant inside.
“There was nothing to be done. Let us find the King and quit this place.” Tyrolean’s words sounded as empty as Draken felt. Banal; a pacification. Nothing more.
“Aye. Let’s do that.” A pounding on the door jolted through him, prickling his skin like nearby lightning. Someone shouted, “Rinwar! My lord, open the door!”
Tyrolean met his eyes. “Rinwar’s men are here, Draken. Will you lead, or shall I?”
Draken. Not Khel Szi. Not Highness. “I will. This is my fight,” Draken said. “How many do you think there are?”
The doors pounded again, and strained against their bar. Someone clever slipped a blade in the crack between them and shoved up against the metal latches.
“Enough to kill in the light.” Tyrolean yanked his blades from their scabbards and turned toward the door.
He was right. There’d been enough killing in shadows to last Monoea a generation. The latch flipped with a scraping creak and the doors burst open.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Less than an army crowded the corridor outside Rinwar’s study, but too many to count in the ensuing chaos. On dual instinct, Draken and Tyrolean kept the fight to just inside the doorway. Crowded by the doors and flanking tables, it created a sieve through which opponents could only attack them two at a time. Draken had the front line; Tyrolean just behind him. Tyrolean was a cyclone of blades, silent but for the whistle of steel on air and the dull thud when they achieved a hit. Draken fought slower, grunting as he drove Seaborn home.
Magic fair hummed through his blood, a tantalizing drag to wring life from death. His lips parted, wanting to whisper the words.
This is new, he thought, startled.
The hesitation cost him a strike and slowed his defensive move. A blade caught the bicep of his free arm, slicing deep, stopping at the bone with soul-shuddering intensity rather than pain. His opponent nearly slipped through. Draken growled and struck, almost feeling as if the sword were leading, or as if his old swordhand Bruche guided his arm. Maybe it was muscle memory, but his blow knocked his attacker’s attempt at a guard and caught the man across the throat. Blood gushed from his jugular and the man fell before his expression could register surprise.
The next one was big enough to bear a two-handed sword. It was too big to wield in the close quarters of the doorway and corridor; he shoved past Draken with a growl and went for Tyrolean where he had more room. Draken let him go; he had to. He could only pray Tyrolean had his back.
His arm seared where the cut healed itself and vertigo clawed at his head. Draken had no time to think of why. The last man forced immediate battle as Draken was shoved back. He was wiry and strong, every blow too precise for Draken to defend against for long. Urgency from exhaustion, from knowing he wasn’t good enough, from knowing more guards could come at any moment, caused Draken to take extraordinary chances. He was vaguely aware of taking cuts; he came at the wiry fighter hard and fast, letting him inside his guard, blocking with his braced arm. The bone ached from taking so many quick blows.
He drove the wiry man back, punched him in the face as the man’s blade sliced in the gap beneath his breast plate. They were too close for the strike to get enough momentum. It merely stung rather than gutted. Draken punched again with his bracer. The wiry guard stumbled back, falling against the opposite wall in the corridor. Draken sliced his throat and spun, remembering the one that had slipped by him.
There were two Ashen. Though one was only tall as Draken’s chin, he had Tyrolean well-engaged with the help of the brutally huge compatriot. The Captain was doing his best, fighting with both blades in tandem. But he was faltering. Draken had never seen that from him before. Then he realized Tyrolean was bleeding from a cut across the chin and another along his chest. Someone had gotten past those rapid, agile strikes? A second shock of the day. Or perhaps the tenth. Draken had lost count.
Tyrolean caught the big man’s sword with his smaller one and shoved him toward Draken, who could barely believe Tyrolean’s tempered Gadye alloy held against the heavier two-handed blade. Ty followed with a hit to the thigh—not a killing blow, but damaging enough to make the big man growl in pain and waver.
Draken’s arm stung deeply but he ignored it and shoved his sword well within the big man’s reach, more to draw his attention away from Tyrolean. He had all he could do to temper attack from the nimbler, smaller Ashen.
With the stench of blood and loosed bowels filling his lungs, Draken surged forward, following his attention-getting strike with a more effective one. Seaborn clattered hard against the big man’s blade, knocking it aside. Seaborn flared; the big man’s eyes widened. But the big man hadn’t started fighting yesterday; the great sword came back at Draken with shocking power, if not speed. Draken had to lift his arm to deflect the blow, but he misjudged. Too early. The big sword skipped off his elbow and stabbed through the leather breast plate, crunching ribs and driving deep through flesh and organs.
Draken coughed, stumbled. Seaborn flared hot but it fell from his hand as his whole body seemed to fail at once. He didn’t know or realize he fell; he was just there, his head twisted at an odd angle against the thick leg of a table and aching as if
a bane had crawled in there and scraped the inside of his skull with its claws.
Something glowed from the corner of his eye; his hand crabbed toward it and caught the crossguard of his sword. His fingers worked until the familiar leather grip was under his hand. But he was too weak to grasp it.
The big man knelt on one knee, lifting his sword in both hands. Pointed down. At Draken’s heart.
A shout made the Ashen look aside; a thud as a man fell, and then abruptly, something inside Draken surged. Everything shuddered violently. He heard a great crack, as if a giant had splintered a mountain in two. Every wound, especially the deep one in his side, consumed him with astonishing pain. More, smaller noises, crashing and the rupture of stone. He only barely registered the big man’s head separating from his shoulders, and Tyrolean’s crossed blades. He was bloody across his front and to his elbows. Draken heard his name, vaguely, and the world stuttered into darkness—
“Draken.” Someone hook him, a strong hand on his shoulder.
A white light glared into his eyes.
Draken heaved a breath and coughed, but only because his throat was dry. The light blinded him. He squinted into it, tried to speak. Another cough.
The strong hand cupped the back of his neck and lifted. A cup was pressed to his lips. Cool wine mixed with liquid grain, the sting of alcohol on his lips. He coughed but gulped it down. Realized his fingers encircled the familiar leather wrapped hilt of Seaborn. His thumb shifted over the loose end of leather and he released it.
The light faded. He blinked. Osias bent over him, holding the cup to his mouth, his strong hand gripping the back of Draken’s neck. Their faces were very close, the moon on his forehead looking like a black hole, as if his flesh didn’t exist there. Like it was a hole to nothing. Like the Palisade. The sensation made Draken feel ill. He let Osias slide from focus. Beyond him, Tyrolean stood, chest heaving, covered in blood.
Abrupt lucidity left him reeling. Torturing Rinwar. Lady Faizen throwing herself on Tyrolean’s blade. The fight, the sword crashing into his side. His fingers fumbled for his ribs but Tyrolean pulled him up to a sit.
“That is very good wine,” Draken said.
“Is there something you want to tell me, Your Highness?” Tyrolean said.
Draken looked down at his chest. Drying blood caked it. His shoulders tightened. The one still suffered a deep twinge of pain, as it had for moonturns, since it had been dislocated in a fight. His tone was acerbic. “The gods see fit to heal a deathblow but they fail to fix my sore shoulder.”
Tyrolean’s brows raised. “The gods?”
Draken twisted free of Osias’ grip, grasped the table leg behind him, and levered himself upright. His knee protested vehemently, resisted straightening, tight as usual. It’d loosen in a dozen steps. “Khellian’s balls, you’re bleeding a river, Ty.”
“I’ve had worse.” The shortness in his tone betrayed his pain. “You want to tell me what in Korde’s sour heart is happening to you, Draken? I thought you were dead.”
Draken didn’t answer. He was too busy staring around at the room. Jagged cracks split the walls. One pillar supporting the mantle had crashed to the floor. Shutters hung askew from lopsided windows. Icy draughts leaking in cleared the room of some of the death stench, but an undercurrent of broken stone and dust thickened the air. Every table looked as if someone had swept their items to the floor, which was liberally distributed with blood, shards of pottery, scrolls, bodies, and weapons.
Draken frowned. Something was missing among them. “Do you notice none of them have the ash marks like Rinwar and his wife.” And his son.
“I was too busy noticing your mortal wounds knitting themselves,” Tyrolean said.
“And the earthquake as they did so,” Osias said.
Draken stared at Osias. His healing caused an earthquake?
The Mance toed a crack with his boot. “See? Just there.”
Cracks in the stone floor radiated out from where Draken had fallen. He blinked and stepped away. But the ground stayed still.
“How long have you known?” Tyrolean watched Draken, his face blank, betraying nothing.
He reached for the wine and poured it over his sword, drying with layers of blood, then scrubbed it on his discarded shirt until his hands stopped trembling. The normal activity of cleaning his blade calmed his shaking, but not his mind. What in Seven Bloodied Moons had happened to him? Healing minor cuts was one thing, but he should be dead … had been as good as. Some feral magic was at work within him. He gave Seaborn a suspicious look even as he cared for it.
“Some sevennight now. I had no idea it would come to this, healing a death blow.” He should have told Tyrolean, Elena, someone. “Is it the sword, Osias?”
“Aye. And no. Akhen Khel and its magics are wrapped up within the will of the gods. You are truly godsworn, Draken.”
Tyrolean’s face was blank, betraying nothing about what he thought of any of it. He busied himself cleaning his swords with the cloak of a fallen Ashen. There was no way to escape but together. Draken was willing to wager the City of Brîn that Tyrolean wished things were different.
“Why are you here, Osias? How?”
“I thought it prudent to investigate while glamoured. Listen well, because we’ve not much time. This villa is filled with Ashen, or their mercenaries at least.”
“Listen to what?” Draken asked.
“Rinwar is leading the rebellion.”
Draken’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Excellent. We’ve just cut off its paws then.”
“No. Not this Rinwar,” Osias said, gesturing to the dead one. “His elder brother. A Moonminster priest.”
Tyrolean gave an uncharacteristic groan. “We’re in the right family then.”
“Aye,” Osias said. “Just not the right man. And more bad news: rumor says he’s left for Akrasia.”
“Akrasia—?” Draken shed his bloodied cloak, but the rustling failed to overcome the echo of voices from down the hall. “Wait. Is that shouting?”
“That way.” Tyrolean led them in the opposite direction down a long corridor. “I saw stairs as we came in.”
“These big old places have a half-dozen flights at least, for servants and guards and the family. We need a back stair.” And a bow, to fend off more hand-to-hand fights.
“Osias? Do you have your bow?” Tyrolean said.
The Mance produced his longbow out of rippling air. “Aye. But I used the last of my arrows getting inside this place.”
What he wouldn’t give to run across the armory, which might not be in this building at all. He longed for his own Citadel, or even Ashwyc Palace, which he knew better than this place he’d only ever been in a few times, and then only in the public areas for parties or to accompany the King on Black Guard business.
“This one?” Tyrolean indicated a narrow flight.
“Aye. It’ll have to do.” Though he had no idea where they led. They went down the stairs at a good clip, though he let Tyrolean and Osias go first because his knee was still stiff.
The voices closed in on the top of the stair as they descended down into darkness. Draken put his sword in its scabbard to hide its light and they moved carefully down, as silently as they could. The skin on the back of his neck crawled. He kept imagining an arrow piercing his bare back.
“Let’s see how you bloody magic that away,” he muttered to the gods, annoyed at his nerves. He’d been in enough battles and tight spots to remain mostly calm. But fresh tremors in his fingers skittered up his arms and settled in his chest. He tightened his grip on the sword, trying to will strength into his body.
“Be easy,” Tyrolean said softly.
“A light, Khel Szi,” Osias suggested.
Draken glanced back. The voices from the top of the stairs had faded, but it didn’t mean they weren’t being followed. Still, they wouldn’t get far in this pitch stairwell that smelled of dust and death. He drew his sword again. Seaborn’s faint halo broke the darkness, reveali
ng more steps, reflecting off Osias’ silvery hair.
After two turns at featureless landings, they reached the bottom of the flight and paused. They were far underground. Osias lifted his head and sniffed. The air was stale and cold. Torch-lit corridors ran in four directions.
“We could easily be trapped down here,” Tyrolean said.
Draken nodded, grim. “Or lost. But we came to find the King. I fear we don’t have much time. The rebels will know soon that Rinwar is dead.”
Tyrolean nodded. After a moment of recounting their turns and rectifying them with the layout of the house above, Draken nodded at the corridor he thought may lead inward; surely they’d hold the King deep in the bowels of the villa. They walked quietly for some time. Their soft footfalls and breath were the only sounds. Sweat broke out cold over Draken’s skin. Tyrolean must feel it too; his skin gleamed damply pale in the dim light, ghostlike. That turn led to a dead end. Draken kicked at a bit of rubbish—remnants of cloth and a broken basket—in frustration.
“So we go back, then,” Osias said.
There was nothing else to do, though Draken silently cursed the waste of time. They turned and went back to the crossing, treading softly lest the guards were waiting for them. But it seemed deserted.
Draken shook his head. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe no one ever comes down here.”
But Tyrolean glanced about, gestured down another anonymous corridor, and Draken and Osias followed.
“It’s odd. Rinwar made little effort to hide his actions, nor did he fight back terribly hard,” Tyrolean said at last, very softly, “The whole thing was rather too easily done.”
Draken snorted. “Speak for yourself. You didn’t take a sword in your gut.”
Tyrolean cast an inscrutable glance over his shoulder. Draken couldn’t help wondering if he wished the sword had done its job.
“I think Rinwar was curious over what you had to say,” Osias said. “It is my sense Monoeans don’t take to outsiders easily.”
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