To his credit, Nysin leapt to his feet with impressive alacrity and took his place in the rank that quickly formed in front of Issa. Enyera, the speedy Earaqi that had won the battle with Tannard for them, was the last to join the line, one pauldron still askew.
Issa strode toward them, Etai at her side. “I come with a mission from the Lady of Blades.” She spoke in voice pitched low so only her patrol could hear. “A duty of the utmost importance.”
Though the Indomitables’ expressions remained stern blanks, excited curiosity sparkled in the ten pairs of eyes fixed on her. Enyera actually leaned forward in her eagerness to hear.
“There have been reports of suspicious activity on the Artisan’s Tier, near the Temple District,” she told them. “Lady Callista has assigned us to go and seek out those causing trouble.”
“What sort of suspicious activity?” asked Rilith.
“The kind that gets a special patrol of two Keeper’s Blades sent out to investigate,” Etai said before Issa could.
Issa shot her fellow Blade a stern glare, then turned back to her patrol. “Right now, that is all I can tell you, but I want it to be perfectly clear that anything out of the ordinary is to be treated as a threat to the wellbeing of the Zadii.” She fixed them with a meaningful look. “The Lady of Blades has personally entrusted us with this task of protecting the people of the Artisan’s Tier.”
Right now, her Indomitables didn’t need to know specifically who on the Artisan’s Tier they were protecting. By the grace of the Long Keeper, nothing would go amiss and they could proceed on their patrol normally.
“We will not fail Lady Callista.” Determination echoed in Enyera’s voice.
Issa nodded. “Of that, I have no doubt.” If anything happened, she knew that her Indomitables—though they were trainees like her—would be able to handle it.
Thousands of stars dotted the night sky as they marched out of the barracks. Torches ringed the training yard and braziers burned by the Fortress’ front gate, but the light did little to drive back the chill that settled over the late night. Midnight lay less than an hour off, and it would take them the better part of two hours to reach Briana’s house near the Temple District at a steady marching pace.
Dictator Pryle saluted as they marched out, and Issa mirrored his gesture. She didn’t need to glance back to feel the excitement humming through her patrol. Even Etai, who marched along at the front of the column beside her, brimmed with a mixture of wary tension and the excitement that set in before a battle.
The two- and three-story houses along the Defender’s Tier were dark and silent, the Alqati families of the Indomitables long since abed. In the light of the oil lanterns that hung at regular intervals along the Warrior’s Path, the colorful gardens seemed somehow pale and drab. Yet Issa knew that those fortunate enough to be born Alqati led lives far better than anything the Earaqi, Mahjuri, or Kabili could ever dream of.
A cool wind whistled through the Defender’s Tier, and Issa found herself thankful for the heavy Shalandran steel armor and the thick coat of padding beneath. The armor seemed to actually soak up the warmth of the sunlight during the day, keeping her warm at night. That, and the marching definitely helped to drive back the chill.
Sweat pricked on her forehead as they reached Death Row and turned south, toward the gate that led into the Artisan’s Tier. A sense of urgency thrummed within her. Lady Callista had told her she had until noon—given that midnight had just passed, that left less than twelve hours to complete her mission of procuring whatever proof Kodyn had found to implicate Councilor Angrak. Twelve hours ought to be more than enough, but she wouldn’t rest until that mission was completed.
Few people moved about the streets of the Artisan’s Tier at this late hour, which meant she and her company could make good time. None of the Indomitables complained as she sped up her march to a fast walk, just shy of a slow jog. The sight of cloaked figures scurrying into the shadows near Smith’s Alley sent up warning flares in her mind, but she forced herself to ignore them. Her true destination lay farther west, just before the Temple District. She and her patrol had to make certain Lady Briana and her companions were safe.
Both Industry Square and Commerce Square stood empty, the wooden stalls shuttered for the night. It seemed so strange to walk through the ranks of wooden stands—she’d never seen the always-busy marketplace so silent and lifeless.
A knot formed in Issa’s shoulders as they approached the road that would take her and her patrol past Briana’s house. A profound stillness enveloped the Artisan’s Tier—so complete as to seem almost unnatural. Even the night birds had fallen silent and the wind had stopped its gentle rustling in her ears. No lights glimmered in any of the two- and three-story houses bordering the Artificer’s Courseway.
She held up a fist to slow her patrol. Something was wrong. She didn’t know how she knew—a lingering scent in the air, a strange stillness to the night, or a sixth sense somewhere deep within her—but she could feel the danger from ahead. It was almost as if the Artisan’s Tier held its breath in expectation.
“Slow and silent,” she hissed to her patrol. The armor of a Keeper’s Blade was crafted with the skill of a master artisan, joined so perfectly it hardly made a sound. Indomitables, however, made far more noise with their clanking half-mail and hobnailed boots.
Yet her trainees made hardly a sound as they rounded the corner. Issa’s heart stopped as she caught sight of dark-cloaked figures moving through the shadows toward Briana’s house. Issa counted fifteen, each carrying drawn steel.
To her horror, only the guard, Rothin, stood in front of the door. Hykos was nowhere in sight.
A single sword stood between Briana and certain death.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Evren’s mind raced as he tried to come up with a way to free Serias from the Ybrazhe thugs torturing him. He risked a glance into the miller’s shop and stifled a curse.
No bloody chance I can fight my way through that many thugs.
The Hunter of Voramis would race, swords swinging, but the assassin could heal from wounds that would kill any normal man. Evren didn’t have any special healing ability—any special abilities at all, save for a stubborn refusal to quit.
He couldn’t fight, so he had to find another way to deal with the thugs. An idea sprang to his mind: there’s only one thing the Ybrazhe is truly afraid of.
Without hesitation, he acted on the idea. He slipped away from the window and returned to Miller’s Alley. He drew in a deep breath. This is bloody insane! And yet, a defiant grin split his face. If training with the Hunter has taught me one thing, it’s that insane has a damned good chance of working. Provided it doesn’t kill me, of course.
Before he could reconsider, he raced down the street—straight toward the mill.
He burst through the door. “Indomitables!” he shouted. “Patrol coming this way!”
Eight pairs of eyes turned toward him, eight heavy, scarred hands reaching for clubs, swords, and daggers. Evren didn’t give them time to react. “They’ll be here in seconds!” With that, he turned and tore out of the door, leaving the stunned Ybrazhe behind him.
Once outside, he ducked back into the shadows of the miller’s shop and darted toward the open chute. He reached it just in time to see the Ybrazhe thugs racing out of the mill’s front door and onto the street, leaving only Annat standing guard over Serias. The thug actually reached for a canvas sack and draped it over the bound youth, as if trying to conceal the boy and make it appear as if all was normal within the mill.
Evren stifled a grin. Bloody insane, indeed! During his years on the streets of Vothmot, he’d learned to run at the first hint of the Wardens of the Mount. Better risk looking foolish than getting pinched. The Syndicate thugs would learn the truth of his ruse soon enough and return, but he’d bought himself a minute or two.
Slipping one jambiya between his teeth, Evren slithered through the open chute and dropped to the stone floor without a sound. He crept up behi
nd Annat silent as a wraith and let the dagger fall into his hand.
“Didn’t you hear?” he asked in a conversational tone. “There’s an Indomitable patrol on the way here now.”
Annat whirled, eyes narrowed in suspicion. His mouth opened just in time to meet Evren’s swinging fist. The punch was perfect—Evren’s strength backed by the weight of the dagger in his hand. His blow connected with Annat’s jaw, the diamond-shaped pommel of his jambiya carving a chunk out of the man’s cheek. Annat fell like a sack of dropped horse apples.
Evren dodged the thug’s falling body and leapt toward the millwheel. Ripping aside the canvas, he sawed at the ropes holding Serias bound. The sharp curved blade of his jambiya sliced through the hemp strands with ease. Serias sagged, groaning, his eyes closed.
“Hey!” Evren shook the boy. “It’s me, Evren. We need to get out of here, now!”
“Evren?” Serias mumbled.
Evren recognized the signs of shock—caused by the repeated blows to his head and the agony of the stone crushing his fingers. One glance at the boy’s hands told him the bones hadn’t quite been pulverized, simply fractured. They had already begun to swell and would need a physicker’s attention, but he ought to retain use of his fingers.
“Come on, they’ll return at any minute.” He helped Serias to stand, half-carrying the boy and hauling him toward the grain chute. “You can do it.”
After a failed attempt, he simply lifted the smaller boy and shoved him feet-first through the chute. Serias fell with a groan, and Evren scrambled out after him.
“Where can we go that’s safe?” Evren hissed. “Where you can hide?”
“Killian…” The boy mumbled.
“Yes, where’s Killian?” Evren’s mind raced. “We need to warn him of what happened.”
“Killian…Smokehouse.”
Evren’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”
Serias nodded. “Hiding place…”
“Damn!” Evren breathed. “Bloody good one, if you ask me.” The Smokehouse, an exclusive opium den that catered only to upper-caste Shalandrans, was the last place he’d expect to find a reputable Intaji like Killian. Then again, the real Killian wasn’t exactly an upstanding member of society.
“Come on.” He clutched the boy tighter and helped him stagger down the street. “We need to get you off the streets before—”
Angry shouts from behind him cut off his words. He dove into the shadows of a nearby alley, dragging Serias behind him. The boy managed not to cry out, though he grunted as his hands struck the hard ground.
“Where are they?” Annat’s voice rang out shrill in the night. “Find them right bloody now! They’re just Keeper-damned kids!”
Evren grinned. Surprise, you bastard. He’d gotten Serias out, but now he had to get them both to safety. The Ybrazhe would be flooding out of the mill into the streets of the Artisan’s Tier in seconds. Eight thugs, doubtless with more nearby for back-up. He’d never get out of there with the injured Serias slowing him down.
“Stay here!” he hissed at the boy. “Keep silent and still and they’ll never find you.”
Serias clutched at him. “Don’t…go…”
“I’ve got to warn Killian,” Evren said. “But I’ll make sure to send one of the Mumblers to help you.”
The boy’s faint call echoed behind him, but Evren ignored it as he slipped out of the shadows and into the street. Though guilt nagged at him for leaving Serias there in his condition, he knew he had to get to Killian. Once he’d warned the blacksmith, he could get back to the others to warn them about the “idiots in the tomb”—Hallar’s Warriors, whoever they were.
The Ybrazhe thugs might be effective at cracking heads, but the heavily-muscled men seemed far less competent when it came to finding clever thieves. Evren dodged the first two-man search party by scrambling into the shadows between two buildings. He slithered out into the alley that ran behind the houses, and raced off westward.
I’ve just got to get past their searchers and I can go warn Killian. His mind raced as he ran. The blacksmith needed to know what the Ybrazhe was doing to his Mumblers, and that they were hunting him.
As he rounded a corner to rejoin the small back road that ran parallel to the northern cliff face, a dark figure leapt out of the shadows directly in front of him. “Got you!” Two huge hands clamped down on Evren’s arms. “Dodgy little bastard, aren’t y—”
Evren did the only thing he could: he drove his head into the man’s face. Sparks whirled in his vision and pain raced through his skull, but the thug fell back with a cry. The moment the man’s hand released him, Evren spun and struck out with a wild punch that cracked into the man’s jaw, hard enough to snap his open mouth shut with a loud clack. Another blow, this one a more controlled jab to the bridge of the nose, set the man reeling. Tears streamed down the man’s eyes, blurring his vision long enough for Evren to bring his knee around and across, right into the thug’s groin.
“Urgghle.” A pitiful sound from such a large man. The thug’s knees sagged, and Evren finished him off with a pommel strike to his temple. He was stumbling away before the thug’s body hit the street.
His skull throbbed with every step, but slowly the dancing stars faded and Evren could see once more. Slowly, he gained speed and raced deeper into the darkness of the Artisan’s Tier, westward in the direction of the Smokehouse. The opium den stood a short distance to the northwest of Commerce Square, tucked away from the Artificer’s Courseway in order to offer its clients a modicum of discretion.
A throbbing ache settled into Evren’s skull, a stern chastisement for his folly. He’d learned early in his years as a Lectern apprentice that only idiots used their heads—done wrong, it could knock you out faster than it incapacitated your foe. The new, sharp pain in the crown of his head added to the dull pounding resulting from the minor concussion he’d sustained two days earlier.
Yet he couldn’t afford to slow, much less stop. He was running out of time to get word to Killian that the Ybrazhe was hunting him, then warn his new comrades about the threat of Hallar’s Warriors.
He scanned every shadow as he ran, ducking into darkened alleys and racing down side streets to shake anyone tailing him. His heart hammered in time with his flying feet, and he could almost measure the passing seconds according to the pounding behind his eyes.
Hope surged within him as he caught sight of the Smokehouse, a squat single-story building with no visible decoration or signage. It looked like any other decaying structure in Shalandra, yet one look at the solid front door told Evren that appearances were very deceiving in this instance.
He raced toward the building and pounded on the heavy door. “Killian, it’s Evren!” He knew that people in the surrounding homes and buildings would hear, but at that moment it didn’t matter. He had to warn the blacksmith of the danger, so he kept right on pounding. “Open up!”
A thunk sounded as a deadbolt was shot, accompanied by the rattle of two chain locks and the click of a latch disengaged. The heavy door swung open on silent hinges and a familiar face peered out. “Evren?” Killian’s brow furrowed. “What in the bloody hell are you doing here?”
“Coming to warn you that the Ybrazhe’s after you.” Evren struggled to catch his breath; the sprint across the Artisan’s Tier had stolen his wind. “They had Serias—”
“What?” Killian tore open the door and his bushy eyebrows snapped together in a glowering glare. “Where do they have him? Tell me, and I’ll march over there and rip their heads off with my bare hands.”
By the inferno burning in his eyes, Evren didn’t doubt Killian could or would.
“No need,” he said. “I freed Serias, then raced over here as quickly as I could.”
“Is that how you found me?” Killian’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Evren nodded. “Serias told me. He said—”
Killian seized his collar. “Did he tell them, too?”
Evren spun, and his heart sank as his eyes fell on
a familiar figure striding down the street toward him.
“Well, well, well!” Annat’s face creased into a fierce grin. “If it isn’t the famous blacksmith himself? We spent more than an hour trying to torture your location out of your boy. Lucky for us, this one solved that little problem for us.”
Seven more thugs raced down the street behind Annat. Five carried drawn swords, daggers, and even one spike-studded clubs. The other two, however, carried loaded crossbows, which they held leveled at Evren and Killian.
Annat glared at Evren, a hand to his bleeding cheek. “Almost makes me willing to forgive you for that sucker punch, boy. Instead, I’ll just kill you quick, rather than taking my time as I intended to. Consider it a thank-you for making my night a whole lot better.”
Evren’s heart sank, and his cheeks burned with shame as he realized the truth. They weren’t asking Serias about Killian’s book. They wanted Killian himself. And I led them right to him.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Despite his worry for Aisha, Kodyn had to trust that the Ghandian would find her way back to Briana’s. Right now, we’ve got to focus on getting this evidence to Lady Callista as soon as possible.
He shot a glance at Hykos, who strode along at a brisk march beside him. He almost asked the Archateros to take the evidence to the palace, but stopped himself. Hykos had already come close to deserting his post just helping them in the Coin Counter’s Temple—no way would the Blade leave them, even for something as important as this.
That means I’ve got to deliver it myself, Kodyn thought. Either that, or wait until Issa returns, whenever that will be.
He chafed at the delay; the sooner they got the evidence into Lady Callista’s hands, the sooner they’d have vengeance against the Keeper’s Council for the role they played in Suroth’s death. But right now, with everything that had happened with the Gatherers and Ybrazhe, Kodyn had to be cautious. They’d all come far too close to dying too many times already.
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