Fortune's Toll (The Legion of the Wind, Book Two)

by Corey Pemberton

  No. Oh, gods…

  Those dead eyes and pale skin. They looked like people from Harlock, and they moved like that kingdom's infamous order of assassins.

  None of the Whispers said a word. And when those daggers slid out of their cloaks, they glowed pale green. Viridian, Argus's last inkling of hope vanished. He'd killed many back in Azmar, but the hunt wasn't over. Not until they said it was.

  “Kill them,” said the young king who'd hired them. “Kill them all.”

  Argus slid into the gap between Siggi and some cell bars. Shoulder to shoulder, the Legion blocked the width of the corridor. Behind them, cells rattled, doors creaked open, and they heard the guttural moans of freedom.

  “We don't want to harm you,” Argus said. “But I won't let you harm Kyra. She comes with us.”

  His sandy-haired nephew lunged forward, menacing his sword. “My mother goes where I tell her to go. She's a subject of Leith—just like everyone else on these shores.”

  “Your mother loves you, Silas. She only wants to look after you.”

  The King of Leith snorted. “You look at me like you know me, and you talk like you know me too.”

  “I know her. I know her heart.”

  Argus glanced back. He pulled Siggi out of the way just before a stampede of freed prisoners rushed the stairs. Their screams made his blood run cold. Inhuman faces. Bulging veins and greedy hands of men who'd decided to die long ago—and expected the next few moments to make things official. They gritted their teeth and balled their fists.

  They might not see the sky again, but before they passed into the next life, they'd try to take a few others with them.

  Silas's sword twitched left then right, indecisive. He would have been bowled over if it weren't for the shield his bodyguards formed around him. Whispers readied their daggers, their faces calm.

  “Now!” Argus shouted.

  It was only a tiny window, a sliver of a second before the prisoners were impaled on the daggers, but the Legion of the Wind took advantage.

  They lunged into the fray. Reaver singing. Siggi and Nasira screaming. Brenndall the Bold laughing like mad. Their weapons flashed into the shadows, hacking and stabbing at the black cloaks that seemed just as immaterial.

  Reaver whistled over a prisoner's head, lopping off another belonging to a Whisper. Argus ran another woman through just before she pulled out her dagger from a crumpled prisoner. He went wherever the blade led him, thrusting and cutting and spinning his way toward the blade with all the gems.

  Silas screamed for more guards. Brenn smacked him with the backside of his fist. The boy fell, unable to put his feet under him, scrambling for the crown that had skittered across the corridor.

  “Watch out!”

  Argus leaped away, clearing a path for Siggi's mace. She hit home on a Whisper's skull, hardly slowing down, continuing her arc until the Rivannan sent her into another. Horrible clicking sounds filled the dungeon. He'd heard them innumerable times. The sounds of shattering bones and blood geysers. He'd lost friends and hopes and lovers…

  But those sounds would never leave him.

  Argus jumped toward the edge of the corridor, plugging the gap before a Whisper squeezed past. This one dragged Nasira along with him. Their daggers locked, sparking, shrieking before the jagged viridian cut clean through hers.

  The Whisper raised his dagger, aimed it at Nasira's chest and smiled.

  No!

  Argus swung open the cell door as hard as he could. It hurtled into the back of the assassin's head. The man stiffened, froze, and fell limp. His dagger, which hovered an inch from Nasira's belly, dropped to the floor.

  Nasira grabbed it and looked at Argus, shaking her head.

  “No one gets behind us,” he said. “If they get behind us…”

  She nodded. Her eyes said what her mouth didn't. Then we're dead.

  Those prison cells had broken the strongest of men. But they were the Legion's best chance at freedom. The only shields they had fighting numbers such as these.

  He stabbed at them, trying to prod them toward the center, but only pierced wayward cloaks. Something was wrong. The Whispers shouldn't have retreated willingly. But they were—and they were almost eager about it. With the prisoners dead and their corpses shucked aside, they formed into a wedge shaped like a broadhead.

  Here they come. They'll try to pierce right through the center.

  Argus racked his mind for the right spell—any spell at all. Muddled words swarmed him. He needed his books. But all he had were his friends and the sword that drove him to madness. He prayed they were enough.

  “Get my mother, you idiots!” yelled Silas. He was on his feet again, cowering near the base of the stairs. His face was red, tattooed with an imprint of Brenn's fist, and blood splattered the ground from his split lip. He'd found his crown, which rested askew on his sweaty hair. A crack ran through the gold; some of the opals were missing.

  The Whispers surged forward. Argus watched that thicket of daggers bristle. At least half of them still standing. Too many. They stepped over the dead ones from their order without even looking down.

  “Hold the center,” said Brenn. He took the middle position himself, chuckling, wiping blood from his ax onto his trousers. Argus fell in beside him. Nalavacian sweat dripped onto him from above. Blood, too. Brenn was bleeding. When had that happened?

  “Argus!”

  A woman. But Nasira stood right next to him, and she was quiet.

  “Kyra?”

  She screamed again. Everything in his body told him to turn around, but Reaver sang a different tune. She reminded him that the instant he did, the Whispers would turn his back into a pincushion. They'd press through the gap. It would all be over.

  He squeezed his blade and watched them come. Their eyes flickered. Some of the hardness in those grays and greens and blues washed away. Where focus had ruled, indecision remained.

  Why aren't they moving?

  Argus glanced back. He blinked a few times, but the terrible sight remained. Then he knew why Kyra had screamed.

  “No!”

  She wasn't screaming anymore, though, with a dagger resting against her throat. Her eyes jittered. With the way they bulged, it was a miracle they remained in those sunken sockets at all. Kyra's feet hardly touched the ground as she was shuffled forward by one of the stringy-haired prisoners she'd released.

  I told her to do it, Argus thought. And now that bastard has his grimy hands all over her…

  “Let her go,” Silas called. His voice cracked, more boy than man. “I said let her go!”

  Instead, the prisoner drew closer. “In time, king. I'll give you mommy back. After you let me leave.”

  “Kill him,” Silas said. “Get his hands off my mother.”

  The prisoner smiled. “Uh uh.” He pressed the dagger deeper, just enough to draw blood, and Kyra squealed. “I'll kill her. String me up, lop my head off, whatever. But don't think I won't do it. Don't question a man with nothing to lose.”

  Silas screamed, and this time Argus screamed with him.

  “Not a step closer,” the prisoner said. “Make way. Clear us a path through the center.”

  Argus backed against the dungeon cell filled with the king's guards. They'd gone quiet once the fighting started, like maybe if they didn't move they'd go unnoticed. He felt them panting on the back of his neck, their sweat on the cell bars.

  Reaver scorched his sword hand. The closer that prisoner came the hotter she burned. It took everything Argus had to pull Nasira out of the way and give him room to escape.

  “That's it,” said the prisoner. “Easy does it.” His legs, accustomed to tight spaces, weren't working right. He staggered toward them. His face was sallow. Sweat covered every exposed bit of skin, making him look like melted candle wax.

  Kyra stopped squirming. She allowed the man to take her, breast heaving, eyes darting about the crowd. Those eyes landed on her brother and he said, “It's all right, Kyra. Everything will
be all right.” Argus gritted his teeth and held Reaver as tightly as he could. She sang to him. The saddest ballad he'd ever heard.

  At last, hostage and prisoner passed into the black cloaks.

  The Whispers kept their daggers pointed straight up. When Kyra and the prisoner edged through the middle of them, Silas began to whimper. Kyra had always been petite, but she looked like a child surrounded by those cloaks, a precocious one who'd decided to sort through her mother's wardrobe.

  Except this wardrobe is full of daggers.

  “No one move,” Argus said. “No one flinch.”

  “Let them pass,” Silas said. He still had his oversized sword, but looked like he wanted to be rid of it. “And then you'll let my mother go. Is that right?”

  “Aye,” said the prisoner. “Though I have to say Belen was thrice the man you are, your grace.” He pulled his hostage along faster. Argus couldn't decide what drove him: false confidence, bravado, or madness.

  “Insolent cur. I should rip out your tongue.”

  “Silas!” Argus said. “Stop it!”

  The prisoner said, “Better listen to that one, lad. One of these fighters has more sense than his king. Ha! Which one is it?” He glanced around, chuckling. “Oh, well. Everyone looks the same down—argh!”

  A flinch.

  Just a glimmer in the torchlight, and then it was gone.

  The Whisper buried his blade in the prisoner's side. He lurched forward, nearly crumpling his hostage.

  “No,” Silas said. “No no no…”

  The Whisper twisted his blade, ripped it out and buried it again. All around him, others stabbed the prisoner. The man seized. His limbs convulsed as if in the throes of a wild religious ritual. Blood gurgled from his mouth. His eyes bounced about, then froze.

  “He got him,” said one of the imprisoned guards. “Got the bastard.”

  The prisoner slumped and began to fall. Kyra, squirming again, grabbed his wrist and tried to pull it away from her neck. He was still gurgling. Filling the dungeon with his moistureless breaths.

  She screamed, tried to rip away the arm.

  The prisoner twitched.

  It was his last movement alive.

  Kyra shucked under his arm and let him plunge to the floor. Yet when she pulled away her throat was slick with blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “No,” Argus said. “Gods, no!” He sprinted toward his sister. He was running, floating, falling all at once. Everything faded but the quiver in his bowels. By the time he reached her, Kyra was already on the ground.

  He cradled her in his arms.

  “Kyra!”

  The prisoner hadn't meant to do it. A convulsion. A last gasp before death. Or maybe he had. It didn't matter, though, because his sister was the one gasping now, and the only thing worse than seeing her eyes bulge was when they started to glaze over.

  Argus covered her throat with both hands. Blood spurted out of it, sticky and hot. With his mind he reached into her and tried to mend.

  Cloaks and daggers pressed in all around. The Legion. Even his nephew, wailing, holding her hand. Blood. So much blood. Every part he mended just made another part burst. His books. He needed his books…

  “I…I…” she said.

  “Kyra!”

  “Mother!”

  “I…” her honey eyes sparked, fluttered, and sparked again. She tried to speak. Nothing came out but gasps. Kyra started to quiver on the floor, just like the prisoner, just like the man who…

  One more spark of those beautiful honey eyes, and then they dimmed.

  Kyra's body went slack. She died with her eyes open, begging and desperate. Those eyes hung like torches whose wicks Argus would never be able to put out.

  “Kyra! Oh, gods. Oh, my gods.”

  No amount of shaking would bring her back. Even after he closed those eyelids, what lay beneath seared him. They asked questions over which Argus would spend the rest of his life agonizing.

  How could you lose me again?

  Why did you let me die?

  The blood flowed slower from her neck now. Argus paid it no mind, nuzzling against his sister's cheeks before they turned cold. He kissed her and cried onto her and chanted damn near every incantation he knew. In the end, his throat was dry and Kyra lay right where fate had left her.

  “Argus!”

  His friends screamed his name. A flurry of movement all around. People grunting, blades clashing. Shadows crisscrossed Kyra's face. He couldn't stop looking at it, waiting for her to open her eyes again and tell him it was all just a joke.

  She didn't. The way her lips curled horrified him. Why were they pulled upward? The dead weren't supposed to smile…

  “Argus!”

  He looked up.

  A viridian dagger plunged for his face. He rolled aside, dragging Silas with him. The boy had been weeping and pawing at his mother's body. He was too special for a Whisper's dagger or a blow from one of his friends.

  He's mine.

  Silas reached for his oversized sword, whose gems lay wreathed about his mother like funeral flowers. He stomped his hand. When the boy tried to grab it again, squealing, Argus stomped it harder until a satisfying crunch made him smile.

  “Nngh!” Silas hopped up and down, jiggling his hand. A few fingers were bent the wrong way, the joints swollen together like a large mitten.

  Argus grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and shoved him into a dark corner just before the first cell. The king fell, sobbing, still screaming about his hand. At the bottom of the stairs, the Legion fought off the last of the assassins. He caught only glimpses of them between the fluttering cloaks. All of them were still standing… for now.

  Argus grunted and kicked his nephew deeper into the corner. No light, no hired swords here to help him. Just an audience of cool rock. Still on his knees, the boy lunged for Argus's scabbard. A backhanded fist sent him sprawling.

  “You… killed… her,” Silas said. “You… killed… my mother.”

  “I was trying to free her! Kyra's blood is on your hands, you fool. If it weren't for you she wouldn't be down here at all!” Argus's voice quavered. He reminded himself it was the prisoner who slit her throat. But Argus couldn't shake the feeling that he was the one who'd condemned his sister to die.

  Silas squirmed around his legs, earning himself a few more kicks until he went still. “You think I don't know that? That's why I came down here this morning—to release her.”

  “What?” Reaver was already halfway out of her scabbard. She excelled in quick deaths, but Argus had decided to make the king's slow and painful. Until now.

  “That's right. I shouldn't have been so eager to… dismiss her opinions. I only wanted to prove to myself—that I was capable. Lifting the pacifism decree was wrong. Now I've gotten Leith into all kinds of trouble—”

  “I'll say.”

  “—and when I come down here to see if she'll forgive me, she… she… dies!” Silas started to wail. Every time he inhaled his breath caught in his throat before the dam broke and out poured the sobs. Between them, Argus heard the sound of fists punching stones.

  He said nothing. His hand still rested on Reaver's hilt. He'd assumed Silas's assassins came down here to escort her to her execution. But if the boy saw the error in his ways… He sheathed Reaver. Much easier to kill a monster than a human—even a terribly misguided one.

  My flesh and blood.

  “Who are you?” said Silas. “Someone my mother paid to help her escape? I know she has—had—connections out in Rafina.”

  “No. And she wouldn't need to pay me a single dragon. I used to have connections in Rafina too. It was my home, before your father sent me into exile. Kyra was my sister.”

  Silas stopped sobbing. Argus listened as he skittered against the wall and tried to pull himself up. He saw it all with his sight magic. The way the boy's face twisted in confusion.

  “Wait. That means—”

  “Yes. I'm your uncle, Argus. I'm the one who
killed your father. For what he did to my mother and Kyra and me. I watched him bleed. And I'm glad for it.” He said this while leaping away, back into the chaos with the Legion. One of the Whispers had her dagger buried in Brenn's back. He barely even groaned, focusing his efforts on the mangled man in front of him.

  Argus loosed Reaver, and danced to her song.

  She led him right over to the assassin at Brenn's back. Instead of twisting her dagger or pulling it out and trying again, the woman used it like a step ladder. She scampered up with another dagger in hand, going for the Nalavacian's throat.

  Argus jumped.

  He didn't know why, but when he landed Reaver was bloody and the woman's legs didn't work anymore. She tried to crawl up, then down, but all she could do was fall onto his outstretched sword.

  Skewered.

  He ripped out the blade and hacked down the man who had Nasira penned against a cell wall. Only three or four Whispers left. The Legion could handle them, but…

  Something glinted across the corridor.

  Gems. Argus sprinted over there, but Silas had already reclaimed his sword.

  “You're dead. I saw you die. You're nothing more than a ghost!”

  Silas charged with his sword held high. He screamed as he passed into the torchlight. His face was bruised and bloodied, gaps in his grimace where teeth should have been. He nearly tripped over Kyra's body and yelled again.

  “Come on out, you coward! Let me see your face!”

  Reaver was happy to oblige him. She thrust Argus forward, and he dodged his nephew's clumsy thrust. His mind was gone. His limbs moved as if on puppet strings. He jumped over Kyra's body, striking midair, aiming for Silas's sword. It flew from his hands and against the cell bars, drawing gasps from the guards still inside them.

  Argus knocked the king to the ground and used a boot to pin him.

  “It is you,” he said. “You're the man from the posters.”

  “Yes. Syrio must have gotten tired of your meddling. So he gave you the wrong man—a fool's gift.”