So close. All the medallions lay on the other side of that invisible barrier. All those who had profited from their power, who had corrupted Nadežra with their unrestrained desires. Everything he’d fought against since his creation, in one place.
If he could get to it in time.
But even if he couldn’t… He was protected against any single medallion’s influence. Would that hold against the entire set, linked once more? It had never been tested. The chain had been broken before, though. Even if it was remade, he could break it again.
And this time, there would be no pack of dogs surviving to fight over the scraps of their master’s power.
Pounding footsteps warned him of Vargo’s return. There were spatters of blood on the man’s face that hadn’t been there before. “Stingers outside,” Vargo said through his gasps, holding out a fistful of triple clover charms in every color imaginable. “Varuni’s dealing with it. Tanaquis behind me. Coming as fast as she can.”
The Rook wasn’t going to wait for her. He pulled a blue charm from the tangle and let the rest fall.
Then he drew his sword and stalked through the ward, heading for the temple and the would-be Tyrant.
Temple of the Old Island: The Past
The nameless szorsa walked past Ren, her steps taking her in a curving path. She kept her hands folded and her head bent as if she were tracing a labyrinth—but her path wasn’t like the one Ren knew. Instead of moving in complex loops, now toward the center, now away, she arced back and forth across the floor of the temple, almost completing a circle each time before reversing direction.
But each circuit she walked brought her closer in toward the center.
Ren strained against Tricat’s immobility, to no avail. She tried to speak—maybe she did speak—maybe she just imagined it, her voice ringing out in her head rather than in the air around her. “Who are you? What is this place? How came you to lose your name—what crime were you punished for?”
The szorsa stopped and looked up, but not at Ren. When her mouth opened, only shreds of her words came through, indistinct echoes fading in and out through the depths of time. She looked excited and awed, gesticulating at someone past the edge of Ren’s vision. The muscles of Ren’s neck ached as she fought and failed to turn, to look, to understand.
But she could see other things. The temple around her was different now—different then. Still the same shape, with the high, vaulted hall buried deep in the Point, but the carvings on the walls were nothing like the defaced numinatrian diagrams there in the present. She didn’t even recognize their style. Nor could she move close enough to see what they depicted, apart from the general shape of human figures.
The szorsa moved again, across the path she’d walked before. By straining to her utmost, Ren could just make out lines chalked onto the floor. Something like a labyrinth, but simpler.
More like the thread labyrinths hung up as charms against bad dreams.
Movement again; the szorsa was back. And now she wasn’t alone.
The young man she tugged in her wake was tall and strongly built, and likewise dressed in archaic clothing. In contrast to her braids, though, he had close-cropped blond hair, and his red doublet was northern in style. He cocked his head to one side and nodded thoughtfully as the szorsa gesticulated around her.
A northern man, here in Nadežra. Not unusual; the city had been a port of trade since its founding, taking in ships from the Dežera’s broad valley, from the coast, even from across the sea.
But Ren could think of only one northerner who might have been in this temple, centuries ago.
Kaius Sifigno.
Temple of the Illius Praeteri, Old Island: Canilun 22
The temple’s main chamber was lit by a ring of braziers circling the numinat, red-burning coal and flickering fire instead of the pure, steady light of the Lumen.
Three stingers were waiting for Vargo and the others with swords drawn. No surprise; his little group had abandoned stealth for speed in the short run from the threshold barrier. The Rook met the stingers blade-to-blade while Vargo dodged past, more than happy to let the hood be the hero.
His sights were fixed on Ghiscolo, seated beside Sibiliat on the far side of Diomen’s numinat. Two additional stingers flanked him, and he sipped from a cup of wine as though he were the audience at his favorite play.
A pleasant air that shattered at the sight of the new arrivals. “How did you get in here?” Ghiscolo demanded, rising to his feet as Vargo stalked up. His gesture stopped the remaining stingers before they could charge, but a nod to Sibiliat sent her circling around Vargo to waylay Tanaquis, staggering gasping into the room behind the rest of them.
Vargo could have stopped Sibiliat. But Tanaquis had her own defenses, and Vargo had someone who needed him much more badly.
“Where’s my spider?” Alsius?
::Vargo?!::
I’m here. I’ll get you to safety.
Ghiscolo chuckled. “I have so many questions. Or rather, I had questions when I first realized your spider wanted things—things more complicated than flies and a nice web. Things no spider would ever think about. But I suppose most of my questions have been answered by now, save one.”
He reached under his chair and produced a thick bag embroidered with numinata. No wonder Alsius couldn’t hear anything from inside there.
Ghiscolo dangled it between two fingers like a man taking kittens to the river. When Vargo would have lunged, guards be damned, Ghiscolo said, “No closer, or I’ll crush him under my boot.”
Memory made Vargo stutter to a halt. The day he’d learned what Alsius’s initial plan to save himself had been—that Alsius meant to take his body, and only wound up in Peabody by accident—he’d made good on his threat to smoosh the chatty spider.
He’d lived through being crushed once. He didn’t want to do that again.
Instead he forced himself to speak, gaze locked on the small lump weighing the bag down. The Rook had already dropped one of the other stingers; he couldn’t see what was going on with Tanaquis and Sibiliat, but he would need allies before he could risk charging Ghiscolo. “Ask what you want.”
Ghiscolo let the bag swing gently. “When exactly did you become my brother’s keeper? And why did the Lumen see fit to reincarnate that useless fool as a spider, of all things?”
Alsius, he knows!
::Who? Knows what?::
Ghiscolo. He knows who you are.
While Alsius sputtered, while Vargo tried to think his way through to a solution, Ghiscolo shrugged. “Not that it matters. Only idle curiosity.”
And he flung the bag into the nearest brazier.
A scream ripped out of Vargo as pain tore across his skin. His knees cracked against stone; he batted at flames that weren’t there but burned him anyway, his thoughts reverberating with shrieks not his own. He tried to crawl toward the brazier—Out, out, get him out!—but now the stingers moved. A boot slammed into his shoulder; something inside cracked, the bone grinding against itself as he curled up against another kick. The hands in front of his face were unmarked, but in his head their bubbling surfaces burst, clear liquid seeping glossy across his skin and his thoughts a tangle of Please, please stop not Alsius stop—
A shadow like smoke shot past him, followed by a clatter and a blessed easing of the pain. The sharp ring of steel and a heavy thud; then Vargo’s vision cleared enough to see the Rook, now down and wrestling with one of the stingers among a scatter of coals.
Before he could scramble across the floor to search for Alsius—he saw the charred remnants of the bag; Alsius had to be there—a pair of hands gloved in red-dyed kid wrapped around Vargo’s throat. That grip, surprisingly strong, lifted him to meet Ghiscolo’s furious glare.
Spittle hot as oil spattered Vargo’s cheek as Ghiscolo snarled into his face. “I won’t let you take what was meant for me.” Darkness danced across Vargo’s vision, Ghiscolo’s thumbs pressing down in just the right spot. The world was fading, taking
the pain with it. I’m sorry, Alsius. “Not my brother. Not you. Not anyone. Let’s see what joke the Lumen decides to play on you—”
Ghiscolo’s words shredded into a sudden scream. Then another one, and his grip spasmed open, letting Vargo fall. He slammed into the floor, gasping for air, head pounding with the renewed rush of blood.
Above him, Ghiscolo was dancing like a deranged marionette, his hands flailing at his own body. Then something detached itself from Ghiscolo, falling from the hem of his coat to the floor, something black and charred that hurt Vargo when it landed on the stone.
Alsius… and the excruciating venom of a king peacock’s bite.
Vargo lurched up to his knees as Ghiscolo fell to his. Where were his knives? His muscles, still howling with the pain of Alsius’s burns, couldn’t muster the dexterity to find and draw them. Instead he lunged for the nearest thing to hand: the fallen brazier.
The grinding of bone in his collar, the searing heat on his palms and fingers—those were nothing next to what Alsius had suffered. Now and sixteen years ago, when his brother murdered him out of nothing more than the lust for power. Vargo brought the heated metal down on Ghiscolo’s head, once, twice, three times, before it clattered back to the stone, next to the corpse of the man he’d sworn to bring down.
That swiftly, Ghiscolo didn’t matter anymore. Vargo stumbled toward the charred lump twitching among the still ones. Alsius? Alsius!
::’M fine. No. Not fine. Enough, though. Bag protected me. And you. Stop fussing.::
Choking back a sob, Vargo scooped Alsius up with the hand that still had some semblance of use. I’ll stop fussing when you stop scolding.
::We’re both doomed,:: Alsius grumbled. Then, more quietly, ::That could have gone better… but at least it’s done.::
The vengeance he’d pledged to get for Alsius. Vargo glanced at the blood leaking from Ghiscolo’s skull, then at Diomen still pacing in an unseeing and inexorable circle, binding the medallions with his life. “Not yet.”
Temple of the Old Island: The Past
Ren’s heart was bleeding, her bones aching as she watched the nameless szorsa work with the man who would become Kaius Rex. He wasn’t yet the Tyrant; he was young, unscarred, his clothing good but simple.
But he was here, in Nadežra, before the conquest. Why?
An echo of the past that is yet to be.
The “yet to be” part had sharpened into clarity when Suilis handed over the diagram for Ghiscolo’s numinat. But the szorsa had also called it an echo of the past—and now, drowning in Tricat’s power, Ren saw why.
The figure drawn by the szorsa and the northerner wasn’t the same as the one Diomen had inscribed. It held the crisp circles and straight lines of numinatria, but also that looping, labyrinthine path. When it was done, the two of them circled the center of what they had created, laying down in their wake a series of all too familiar discs.
Gold. Silver. Bronze. Copper. Iron. Steel. Prismatium. Cinnabar. Lead. Gold. And in the man’s hand, a medallion of dull tin. Uniat, before it became a chain.
This was how he’d linked them, joining the separate pieces into one unstoppable whole. Here—in Nadežra. In a hidden temple beneath the Point, with the help of a Vraszenian szorsa.
If she could have moved, Ren would have been sick.
“Did you know?” she screamed at the nameless szorsa. It was no use; the woman couldn’t hear her. Maybe no one could. Maybe no one ever would. “Did you realize what those were—what he would use them for?”
Kaius Sifigno stood with his back to the szorsa, smiling down at what they had prepared. Was the fire of conquest already in his eyes? Or had that come later, after A’ash devoured him whole? What had he aimed for, when he made this power his own?
She had to watch. She had no choice, but she wouldn’t have turned away if she could. Ren had to know what happened, how they’d transformed the separate medallions into a single interlinked chain, a man into a conquering Tyrant.
She had to know how Vraszan had fallen.
Temple of the Illius Praeteri, Old Island: Canilun 22
Kaineto was reaching for the Rook’s hood when he collapsed from a kick to the back of his knee. Vargo staggered like a drunk, as though even that strike had been more than he had in him, but it gave the Rook the opening he needed.
Bone crunched as he slammed his head into the nose of the stinger holding him. Wresting the knife away, the Rook flipped it underhand. One slash to the fore, one to the back, and both stingers had bigger worries than who was inside the hood.
The answer to that question didn’t matter now anyway.
He took particular pleasure—though no particular care—in binding Kaineto and rolling him out of the way, via a route that passed over the scattered coals of the toppled brazier. Vargo was no help anymore. He’d sprawled with his back to Ghiscolo’s abandoned chair, one arm dangling limp at his side, working hand cupped around his spider.
The Rook turned to the one still on her feet. Tanaquis stood at the edge of the numinat, watching Diomen pace out his circle. She’d made short work of Sibiliat, dropping Ghiscolo’s daughter with one of the Rook’s sedative darts.
“What are you waiting for?” he demanded, gesturing at the circle of people. They all stood in a trance, their hands gripping the medallions, their eyes seeing things not of the here and now. All the vipers who filled Nadežra with their poison. “You said you could destroy them.”
“I can.” Tanaquis’s grey eyes, normally so bright, were clouded with indecision. “I could. What I was going to do will work. But I think I ought to ask first whether I should.”
He knew it. Or he should have known it, if the optimism of Grey Serrado hadn’t veiled his eyes. Every time he thought he could trust a cuff, they showed him the truth.
The Rook stalked up to her, blade lifted to prod her past her hesitation. “So you mean to take them for yourself? Let’s see you try.”
“What?” She frowned at him, paying little mind to the steel ready to make her bleed. “No, not at all. What I mean is, given the price, is this still what you want?”
Vargo had managed to drag himself to his feet, and now he slipped between the Rook and Tanaquis. Siding with her. “What price?”
Eret Vargo. Alta Tanaquis. They both wanted power, in their individual ways. Money and control, or manipulation of the cosmos. “Does it matter?” the Rook snarled. “For two hundred years this city has paid a constant price. If we can end this, we must.”
“Even if it means killing them?” Tanaquis gestured to the ring of nobles still caught in the numinat, and Diomen still walking his enclosing circle in an unbreakable trance. “If we let this continue, we can channel their sacrifice to either creation or destruction. Ghiscolo was willing to kill them to get what he wanted. If you feel the same way, then I can do this very quickly. But I did think I should ask first.” She blinked, as if that hesitation surprised her.
Vargo swayed. “Are you seriously fucking asking if we should kill Ren?”
“No,” Tanaquis said. “I’m asking if we should destroy the medallions.”
“By killing Ren!” He tried to grab her arm and hissed when his hand touched the fabric. “Look, I don’t give a shit in the river for people like Sostira Novrus or Sureggio Extaquium. And Masks know I’ve killed when I had to.” Ghiscolo’s crushed skull gave mute testimony to that. “But this—no. Fuck that. We can find another way.”
A growl rose in the Rook’s throat. “Another way. When doing anything requires bringing all ten medallions together—a thing that hasn’t happened since the Tyrant’s death? We should risk this continuing forever, because you don’t have the stomach to seize this chance?”
“I thought you didn’t kill,” Vargo snapped.
He didn’t. He never had. He’d fought, and he couldn’t swear that no one had ever died from the wounds he’d given them, but he’d never struck with the intent to kill. He’d promised not to.
But he wasn’t killing them
now. Their own corruption had drawn them here, the insidious power of a Primordial winding around and through their souls like a strangling vine. They were tainted, every one of them, and they’d brought this death on themselves. With their greed, their lust, their vengeful ways.
Even Ren?
That thought rose up from the deep, a barely audible whisper of protest. What remained of Grey Serrado, buried beneath the weight and the fury of the Rook.
Yes, even Ren. Her intentions might have been good, but she was still corrupted. If her own choices damned her, then so be it.
No.
It was more than a whisper now. The Rook opened his mouth to tell Tanaquis to do it, but no sound came out. Something fought him.
No. A fire burned in the shadows. A fire the Rook remembered—because once he had felt it, no, not him, the woman who made him, the woman who loved and grieved and forged her pain into something more, in the hopes that others would not have to suffer as she had.
He fought against that fire. All the countless sacrifices that came before would be for nothing if they didn’t make this sacrifice now.
No! If you’re willing to sell out your own principles, then you stand for nothing! I will not let you do this—I will not do this!
It felt like tearing fabric, like the breaking of links in a chain. The threads that bound Grey Serrado to the Rook broke… leaving behind nothing more than a man in a hood.
“You’re right.” Grey’s voice was rough, but it was his voice. He ducked his head, hiding behind fabric where before there had been shadow. Dragging his speech into the Rook’s accent and intonation. “How do I break it?”
“Break what?” Tanaquis asked. “The medallions or—”
“The circle,” Vargo said, handing Grey a cloth wetted down with wine from Ghiscolo’s glass. “At the terminus of the spira aurea. Do it there, and everything else will unravel.”
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