“How long until Rist . . . reverts?” Rone asked.
Bastien considered. “Without being dismissed? Uh . . . whenever his body gets too tired to hold its p-possession. Hapshi is easy . . . so he’ll stick around awhile, I think.”
Creepy. He paused, squinting at Sandis. She waved her arm toward the south. “Come on.” He crossed the street, Bastien behind him. Scanned the narrow road that passed the east wall. Silent. Not even a beggar trespassed.
Rone ran his hand along the south wall, the darkness bloating the farther along it he got. What meager light came off the smog-choked moon was blocked by another building looming not far from this place. His hand found a gate. A latch. Locked.
“Rone.” His name was soft as a spring breeze. He looked up, barely making out Sandis’s shape above him. She lowered her rifle over the wall, then dropped it.
Rone caught it and, grimacing, smashed the firearm’s butt against the lock twice before it gave way. The noise felt like a beacon. The narrow gate creaked when he opened it, so he pulled it only wide enough for him and Bastien to slip through. He waited to be ambushed, but the narrow courtyard ahead of him remained silent.
Hapshi landed on the ground a few feet in front of him, startling him. He bit down on a curse. Rubbing her hand, Sandis dismounted, then took a cord from Rone’s pack to tie Hapshi to a piece of exposed rebar. “Here. Somewhere.”
Rone handed her the rifle—she was far more proficient with it than he was—and slipped his left hand around the amarinth stowed in his pocket. He needed every advantage against Verger he could get.
I can’t lose again. If I lose this, I lose everything.
Because Sandis was here, too.
Sandis took Bastien’s hand as they approached the flat, single-story building. It wasn’t especially large, and its squat shape was an anomaly in Dresberg. Maybe the wall had been erected so no one would notice the available space. Or, simply, to keep people out.
They reached another door, also locked. Rone knelt in front of it, squinting to see as best he could in the dim moonlight. He knew this kind of lock. Fumbling through his bag, he found something to pick it with. It took a stupidly long amount of time to hear the telltale click of success.
The darkness was thick as concrete, forcing Rone to dip into his bag to retrieve a half-spent candle.
He braced himself as he lit it, but the space was empty. All of it.
Sandis stepped through first, her rifle at the ready. Rone followed behind her, holding the candle high. It was a single room without windows, a few pieces of junk lying around. Dust covered everything. Some of the walls were peeling.
“Sandis,” Bastien whispered. “Are you sure?”
She nodded.
Rone held the light lower, scanning the floor—
There. Tracks in the dust. He followed them around a bend in the wall, to a narrow staircase without a rail.
He looked at Sandis, whose eyes seemed to shiver. Pressing her lips together, she nodded once.
Rone handed the light to Bastien. There couldn’t have been more than twenty stairs leading down, yet Rone felt as if it led to the center of the earth itself. He told himself the quiver in his legs was from the horse, not fear.
You have the amarinth. It would only last for a minute, but it was a minute Verger wouldn’t have. Rone clutched one of its loops. He wouldn’t miss the opportunity to use it this time.
This door wasn’t locked. Rone pushed it open with his toe, its bottom scraping gently along the concrete floor. Light burned his eyes, though it wasn’t bright. A hallway greeted them. He stepped through it, rounded the corner.
A familiar voice said. “Really? I hadn’t thought so.”
But it wasn’t Kazen’s voice.
It was Talbur Gwenwig’s.
Chapter 25
Sandis’s grip on the rifle slackened. Her heart skipped a beat, making her blood thicken. She pushed past Rone, into the light coming from several hot-burning lamps in a small room scattered with tables, odds, and ends. Two people occupied the space—the stranger, Verger, a shadow leaning up against the wall and across from him, on the other side of one of the tables, was Talbur Gwenwig, her great-uncle.
A new part of her heart shattered at the sight of him. Not Kazen. Talbur. Talbur. Her family. The only blood relation she had left.
It had been him all along. He hadn’t simply let Sandis go; he’d sent Verger to hunt her like some prized quarry. This wasn’t about Kazen wanting her body for Kolosos, it was Talbur wanting her for . . . what?
The vials on the table. The smile on the merchant’s face.
Alys.
She struggled to breathe. Her movements seemed so slow, like they fought a heavy current. Like time had grown lethargic. In the half second it took for Talbur and Verger’s eyes to find her, one thought solidified in her head.
Their bond of blood had never meant anything to him.
When had he decided she was worthless? Had he planned this from the beginning, or only once she’d started defying him?
Neither man hid his surprise well, but Verger leapt to action, swift as a swallow, ready to earn another paycheck.
Rone nearly knocked her over in his rush to intercept.
Rone ducked under Verger’s hook and yanked his amarinth from his pocket. As he brought it down to spin it, however, Verger intercepted, his long, pale fingers seizing Rone’s wrist. For a fraction of a heartbeat, Verger stared at the artifact, confused.
So Rone shot the heel of his hand into the man’s face.
He’d aimed for the nose, but fighting Verger was like fighting smoke, and a last-minute dodge ensured he missed his nose and hit his cheekbone instead. Still a painful blow, which sent Verger reeling, but not an incapacitating one. Rone immediately spun the amarinth and slid it across the floor to some sort of metal contraption in the corner, where its floating lodged it out of sight.
One minute.
Rone launched at Verger, leaning toward his left—Verger’s right. The man in black saw him coming and spun around, sending a long leg out for his head. Rone blocked it with both forearms. His shoes slid on the smooth floor. He dropped his guard, and Verger’s knuckles collided with his stomach in a well-placed uppercut.
Didn’t hurt. Sucker.
Rone grabbed Verger’s arm and twisted with the intent to throw Verger over his shoulder, but the man somehow used the motion to his advantage and spun away, landing a hard blow on Rone’s kidneys as he went. That one would have sent Rone to his knees, had Noscon magic not spurred him forward.
Rone feinted, then sidestepped again to Verger’s supposed deaf side, noticing the awkward way the man turned his head to better hear him. He punched; Verger blocked and swung. Rone ducked and kicked out a leg to knock the other man to the ground, but Verger leapt and executed a very similar move, only higher. The top of his foot clapped loudly against Rone’s ear and knocked him over. Rone rolled out of the way barely in time to avoid the man’s next attack.
This doesn’t matter, he thought, and he jumped to his feet, only to take a foot to his belly. He slammed back into the wall. It doesn’t matter if he’s completely deaf. I’m not sneaking up on him. He sees me.
Rone pushed off the wall and skirted a table, trying to put more space between himself and Verger, barely glimpsing Sandis and Bastien running through a door on the far end of the room. Good; better that they avoid the brawl.
He focused his energy on Verger.
His seconds ticked away.
Talbur didn’t speak, didn’t give her a speech, didn’t smile or frown. He just ran.
Sandis hadn’t noticed the door tucked into the far back corner of the space until Talbur rushed for it. She hesitated only a moment—Could Rone defeat Verger on his own?—but Talbur had Kaili.
She made the choice quick as a firing pin. Trust Rone. Save Kaili.
“Bastien!” She rushed for her great-uncle, and her friend followed. Talbur pushed through the door five paces before Sandis did. Lowering her rifle, she sla
mmed her shoulder into it. The door whipped into the concrete wall behind it.
She nearly fell down the handful of stairs leading to another open area, this one about twice the size of the first room, lit again with overly bright lamps. All of it was concrete and metal and . . . the smell. For a moment Sandis was back in Kazen’s lair, peeking through the door as he turned Heath inside out. The room where he’d chained her to the floor while human and ox blood pooled at her feet.
It smelled like death and chloride lime.
Three men in smocks jumped from their work and scattered like roaches to the walls of the room. The only exit was behind Sandis and Bastien, guarded by Rone and Verger’s ongoing fight.
Sandis rushed toward her great-uncle, then stopped when she saw the table the smocked men had jumped from like flies from feces.
The blood. The body. The hair. She lay prone on the table, her back cut open like a pig’s, her spine glistening.
Bile burned Sandis’s throat. Her heart crumbled like the end of a lit cigar, and the ache of it radiated like a star.
They’d already harvested her.
Kaili was dead.
Rone hit the wall again, but this time he tasted blood in his mouth. Time was up.
He barely managed to duck a fist soaring for his eye. It was a bit of luck that he landed a knee to Verger’s hip, slowing him down for half a second so he could get some space. Some air. Anything.
This old style of seugrat . . . Rone couldn’t predict it. Yet Verger seemed to know every move Rone tried the moment he thought it.
They spun, danced, feet, legs, arms, hands flying. Rone took another blow to his still-sore ribs and nearly crumpled from the pain that shot through his abdomen.
He was going to lose.
Sandis couldn’t look away.
The sight of Kaili slaughtered on the table, her golden script ripped from her flesh, made her sick. Cold. Distant. But she couldn’t look away. Even when Bastien’s hand found her shoulder. Even when the smock-clothed murderers tried to push their way to freedom.
Not until her great-uncle’s voice grated her ears did she find the strength to pull her hot eyes from the massacre.
“Dear Sandis,” he crooned. “What a surprise.”
She gritted her teeth until her jaw flared with pain. Pinned him under her stare. He was so calm, so nonchalant.
She hated him.
He opened his hands, palms upward. “There is a saying on the northern coast that goes—”
“Shut up!” The butt of her rifle bit into her shoulder when she fired. She didn’t remember raising the gun.
Talbur’s eyes widened as crimson squirted from his thigh just above his knee. He collapsed, a hard gasp ripping from his throat.
“My turn to talk,” she spat, taking a step toward him, then another.
Talbur stared at her, his wrinkled face pale, his expression . . .
The slack lips. The wide eyes. The cowering stance. He was scared.
“How could you?” She hated the way her voice trembled, just like the rest of her. “You were my family.” Her vision blurred, forcing her to blink. “I would have given you everything, didn’t you know that? But you had to take it. You took it all. And when I left, you stole it.” She pointed a finger back toward Kaili, and heavy tears coursed down her cheeks. “You stole the closest thing to real family I had!”
The revelation tore into her like Isepia’s claws. Fire had taken her father. Sorrow, her mother. Drowning, her brother. But she’d formed a new family. It was a delicate one, built on feathers and threads, but she’d built it all the same.
And she’d left them. And now Kaili . . . Alys . . .
Talbur tried to right himself, but he wheezed and fell hard onto his injured leg.
Sandis took another step toward him. “I have no family, Great-Uncle.” Her voice sounded too low, and it scraped the floor as she walked. “That means you have no family, either. Will anyone miss you when you’re gone? Take the money away, and would anyone care if you lived?”
Talbur swallowed. “S-Sandis—”
She pushed the gun’s muzzle into his neck. Her hand wasn’t on the trigger, but he trembled anyway. A roach with its foot stuck in honey as the predator approached.
That’s when she noticed it. His dark eyes, so like hers. Never leaving hers. Never glancing to the firearm in her hands. Not once.
He wasn’t afraid of the gun. He was afraid of her.
Summoner, vessel, weapon. She was all of them.
Did it have to be a bad thing?
She blinked, her jaw relaxing. “I’m stronger than you,” she whispered, and the knowledge burned bright in her belly. “I’m stronger than you. I always have been.” Stronger than Kazen, too.
She pushed the muzzle harder into his neck, right above his larynx. “What was the plan, Talbur? To turn me into money, too, or to eliminate your greatest threat?”
Rone knew he was long due for a haircut when Verger grabbed his locks and hurled him backward into his knee.
Rone’s back popped, and for a terrifying minute, he thought it had broken. But when Verger tugged on his scalp to turn him around for another blow to the face, Rone managed to push himself up onto two still-working legs, dig his fingernails between the bones in Verger’s hand, and slam his palm up into Verger’s elbow, forcing the man to release him while twisting his arm and sending him toward the floor.
But Verger recovered swift as a blink. He hit the other side of his elbow, forcing his arm to bend. Rone knew this part—he’d try to turn their hands to gain control; then he’d wrench Rone’s shoulder from his socket and send him tumbling to the floor. Knowing Verger, he’d keep turning and turning until Rone’s arm popped off like the leg of a crustacean.
A realization hit him like knuckles to the face.
Even as Rone tightened his fingers into a fist to keep Verger from grabbing his hand, even as he swept out for Verger’s legs, knowing the other man would try to block and be forced to release his hold, Rone’s brain spun. It wasn’t that he couldn’t predict what Verger would do. It wasn’t an old style versus a new style—new styles were created to better the old ones, not to weaken them. No, this was about intent.
Rone never fought to kill. Both his father and his master had preached against murder. Rone had taken their words in stride; he didn’t want to kill, either.
But Verger did. He had no moral restraints holding him back. Rone fought to incapacitate; Verger fought for death. And one was obviously more powerful than the other.
Rone spun out of Verger’s grip, feeling blood drip down his face. If he wanted to win this—if he wanted to protect her—he had to change his mindset. He had to be willing to kill.
Pulling his knife from his boot, Rone said, “Let’s end this, Verger.”
“You should meet him. Ireth.” Tears continued to run down Sandis’s face, but her hands remained firm on her rifle, so the tears dripped freely from her chin. “You deserve his fire. You killed her. You killed her.” She whispered, “Bastien, please—”
His hand grasped her elbow. Sandis backed away from Talbur—ensuring he couldn’t grab her rifle—before turning to summon into her friend.
But Bastien’s face was severe, his brow tight, his jaw set. “This isn’t the way, Sandis.”
She gaped at him. Pointed toward the corpse on the table. “Look what he did, Bastien!”
He shook his head. “I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve to die. But not like this. Do you really want to use Ireth to kill? Use him the same way Kazen did?”
The brightness at her core snuffed into ash, enveloping her in coldness.
Ireth. Her Ireth.
Didn’t he hate the killing as much as she did?
Death. His or Verger’s. There was no other option. The amarinth was spent.
Verger lunged. Rone didn’t dodge but rushed into it, landing a blow to Verger’s neck even as the man’s knee connected to his stomach. Rone doubled over, but his knuckles had pinched the art
ery running up to Verger’s brain. The other man stumbled. Rone pushed the pain away and launched himself at him, returning the nausea-inducing blow. A sound escaped Verger’s lips when his fist connected—the first sound he’d ever heard from the man.
He had a sudden image of this man carrying Sandis out of his mother’s apartment. Had he been an instant later, Verger would have brought her here.
If he failed, if he let this man live, Sandis would never be safe.
Rone grabbed Verger’s face and shoved him back, sending another uppercut into his stomach. Then another.
I won’t leave her alone again.
He twisted under a weak block and rammed his elbow into the man’s jaw, feeling the joint rip apart from the impact.
Never again.
Verger started to fall, but Rone grabbed him. Pulled him closer.
Never. Again.
He brought his foot down on Verger’s leg just as Verger had the first time they’d fought. Rone had thought he would die right there in his flat. He would have, had Sandis not sent a bullet into Verger’s arm.
Rone’s heel dug into Verger’s kneecap until it bent the other way, shattering the man’s leg into two pieces.
Verger mewled and fell to the floor. But he was too strong. Too powerful. Rone couldn’t let him come back. Wouldn’t let him.
He spun around, gaining momentum, and slammed his heel into Verger’s temple, right above the man’s broken ear. Verger crumpled to the floor and didn’t rise again.
Something thumped behind them.
Sandis whirled around, eyes flashing to the door. Rone.
She couldn’t lose him, too.
“Watch him,” Sandis said to Bastien as her great-uncle’s blood steadily dripped onto the floor. Readying her rifle, Sandis ran back up the stairs, following the retreat of the cowardly men who had ripped Kaili apart, ready to send a bullet through Verger’s head—
The men in smocks were gone. The tables had been shoved into walls and tipped over, debris littering the floor. Rone stood in the midst of the mess, one of his eyes and half of his lips swelling. A streak of drying blood marred the side of his face.
Myths and Mortals (Numina Book 2) Page 23
