He folded his own arms. “I will do no such thing.”
Kaislyn held the dagger up, pretending to examine it. “Do you know what I did to Ikaros, Aamir? I stripped him of the phoenix and gave it to Athalia. Losing the phoenix like that drove him mad. Well, more mad than he already was. Do you know what I will do if you don’t help me now?”
There a murmur of metal sliding against leather as Hezere drew his sword. “If you dare...” His voice actually trembled.
“Choose, Aamir! Your father’s life or Ariana’s sanity.”
This was cruel.
Yes.
Hezere advanced. “No.”
“No?”
He drew closer.
Kaislyn glanced behind her, at the long drop below her. The roof was not flat like most buildings in the city. It rose and fell at angles with narrow walkways running along the edges. There was an occasional guard wall, seemingly added as an afterthought. The steeper angles were made with tiles that absorbed the bright sunlight making them hot to the touch. Wrapping her hands in the folds of her dress, Kaislyn scrambled backwards up a steep rise to the next walkway.
Hezere followed.
Cursing, Kaislyn ripped her veil off and shifted her dagger to her other hand. Hezere lunged for her. The tip of his sword came dangerously close to her chest before she could catch his blade against her dagger and knock it safely aside.
“You will not harm Ariana,” Hezere snarled.
“Yet you continue to protect Ikaros? The man who murdered her family and ruined the Five Cities? Ikaros is guilty. If he wasn’t, don’t you think the phoenix would have returned to him after Nakia’s death? It didn’t. It chose you. Believe me, I had no hand in that decision.”
“He is the only person alive who can control you.” He darted forward and Kaislyn again parried, but not before the edge of his sword sliced along her arm.
“Control me!” she said through clenched teeth. “That maniac enslaved me when I was an ignorant child! He destroyed the Five Cities because he couldn’t be king anymore. He stabbed me because Raina banished him. He tortured my mother. Is that what you mean?”
Hezere hesitated.
Her retreating steps met with empty space and Kaislyn darted a quick look around. The roof fell sharply on either side, ending at a narrow lip of a walkway and then a long drop to the gardens below. Worse, she spied three familiar figures coming from different directions on the roof.
“Blazes, you’re stalling!”
“Threatening me with Sveka goes both ways, Immortal Walker.”
She knocked his sword away again, realizing too late that he wasn’t trying very hard to engage her. Her thoughts whirled. She didn’t exist yet for her parents. Could she meet them like this?
No.
Kaislyn looked at the Royal Assassins and back to Hezere. His eyes glinted in the sunlight, sword held confidently in front of him. Between her and him. Out of reach.
Girl, don’t—!
Kaislyn dropped her dagger and charged straight at Hezere, straight for the sword pointed at her midriff.
“Damnation!”
Hezere flung his sword to the side and Kaislyn barreled into him. He staggered back, grunting from the impact. Kaislyn’s feet slid along the edge of the roof and she wrapped her arms tightly around Hezere. He struggled for balance against her, failed. With a crash louder than the still-clattering sword, they toppled down the side of the roof.
Kaislyn closed her eyes as her body hit the hot tiles, scraped along it. Rolled. They bounced and rolled over each other.
His grip loosened on her. His momentum slowed. Kaislyn flung an arm out, trying to stop her own mad roll. She opened her eyes in time to see the edge of the roof.
Hezere caught her arm, his body half off the edge. Kaislyn jerked through the air before his grip tightened and she swayed suspended over the gardens.
His scarf had become skewed in their fall and Kaislyn saw his face for the first time. If she hadn’t already been out of breath she would have gasped. There were more lines around his face, and Ikaros’ eyes had been black instead of dark brown, but the same features, the proud curl of his mouth, the clearly cut lines of his face were nearly identical to that of Ikaros when Kaislyn dethroned him in the Second City. Put on some gold jewelry and a crown and they would be nearly identical in appearance. The resemblance made her shiver.
Their eyes met. “Guess neither one of us wants to explain my death to Sveka.” Kaislyn couldn’t stop the giggle that escaped her. “We were both bluffing!”
Hezere grunted. The strain of holding them both was turning his face red. “Swear to me. On whatever honor you possess that you will not harm Ariana.”
“And if she goes insane like you and Ikaros did?”
He didn’t deny it. “Swear it!” His grip, if possible, tightened further on hers.
“I swear on my parents’ honor. I swear as the Immortal Walker not to take the phoenix away from her.”
Hezere nodded, satisfied by her oath. His eyes hardened as they stared at each other. She felt a brush against her mind, like the early pressure of a headache forming. It slid away.
“You have to let me in your mind,” Hezere wheezed.
Trust Hezere? Over her dead body!
Girl, that’s about to happen anyway.
Kaislyn’s nails dug into his grip. “I hate you.” She let the pressure in. The nauseating presence of someone else in her mind nearly made her let go of Hezere. Her stomach roiled. She couldn’t look away if she wanted to. Her vision blurred. Her surroundings turned a filmy brown.
Panic rose in her. She was helpless. She couldn’t move anymore, couldn’t blink or even breathe. She was completely at the mercy of someone else. Someone who was not merciful.
A grim laugh echoed in her mind. Now you know why I hate you. Why Ikaros fears you. Who can stop the Immortal Walker? Who is more powerful? You will destroy the Five Cities.
Get out! Kaislyn screamed uselessly. Get out!
The brown film vanished. Replaced by black.
No, not black. Darkness. Stars twinkled far above her as she stumbled along the uneven, ever-rising, road. She shivered and drew her heavy, woolen cloak closer around her body as a humid summer breeze rustled past her. Her body shook from exhaustion and she coughed blood.
She shivered but not from the illness wracking her body. She looked up at the mountains looming far above her. She forced herself to look behind her, at the peaceful foothills that, to her feverish mind, undulated in the breeze. Here? Was here far enough?
Here was close enough.
Head dipping low against her chest, she took a step. She hadn’t noticed her feet were bare.
Another step.
Her body jerked, as if in a spasm.
Step, spasm. Step, spasm.
Fool! she cried to herself. She yanked, gaining control of her quivering, irrational movements. This isn’t how you Shift! She wrenched the bare feet around, took a step, concentrated on her other foot, and stepped.
Shifted.
Kaislyn was hanging from the rooftop, Hezere’s sweaty glove wrapped around her wrist in a bruising grip. She blinked. Blinked again. Her sinuses throbbed from a headache. “That was...odd,” she rasped, still tasting blood in her mouth.
She probed her memories. There, planted among all her own, familiar ones was a new one, the one she’d just lived, had thought was her but wasn’t. Was Ikaros. Ikaros Shifting out of his birth life. It was better than having a marker, than having to risk following him. It was there with her. Forever. She could go after Ikaros whenever she wanted now. She could be rid of him forever.
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Hezere panted, his face twisted in a mixture of pain from holding her and fear at something else.
What shouldn’t she have been able to do? She hadn’t done anything. She heard the skid of running steps.
“You had to drag them into this, didn’t you?” Kaislyn said as Nisken’s frantic voice reached them.
Hezere grunted again.
Kaislyn let go of his hand. Her grip slid through his. “This is going to hurt,” she added. “I hope you’re happy.”
She fell.
The ground didn’t shock as much as it did in the mountains. Fewer rocks she supposed. Spasms coursed through her body and she tasted blood on her lips. It wasn’t hard to lie still after that. She couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.
When a second body didn’t join her, she could only assume that either Hezere had climbed back onto the rooftop or one of the Royal Assassins had reached him in time and helped him.
How long she could afford to lie here before someone came to collect her body? She wouldn’t put it past Hezere to hurry her departure from the city. The decision to move was made for her when she heard someone approaching. Guards or servants she hoped. Those she could handle.
Kaislyn forced herself to her feet and shoved tendrils of hair out of her eyes. Blood streaked her arm and hand. The torn sleeve of her dress sagged with blood. “He owes me a new dress,” she muttered.
Something moved along the garden path and Kaislyn lurched around to see the black-haired boy staring at her, mouth open, eyes wide and horrified.
“Blazes,” Kaislyn groaned.
He knew. Or remembered and guessed who she was from the moment she met him at the gates of the Second City palace. No wonder her actions hadn’t provoked greater curiosity or questions from him. He’d already seen her fall off a five story building and then show up in the Second City sixteen years later as if no time had passed. Just what had gone through his head when he saw her again?
She took a single, shaking step before falling to her knees. “Get over here,” she ordered Zarif. “I need help.”
“You’re an assassin,” Zarif replied, not moving.
Blast the mountains, this was really awkward.
“Don’t be stupid,” Kaislyn said. She climbed to her feet again, tried to take another step, and fell. “Those are my—that’s the Royal Assassins. I’m just... me. And I need to get to the edge of the city. Either help me or get out of my way. And if you run off to tell someone, tell Aamir. See?” she said when Zarif started. “I know who he really is. That means he trusted me with his secrets.”
“I don’t think he trusts anyone,” Zarif said slowly.
Kaislyn limped a few more steps and collapsed. “Damn.”
Without a word, Zarif came over and set her arm around his shoulders. He helped her from the immediate garden, but then Kaislyn stopped, insisting he get her pack from her hiding spot near Dariz’s rooms. Zarif left and Kaislyn wondered if he would return at all. Or worse, return with her parents.
He came back alone.
Kaislyn sighed in relief. “I was expecting you to show up with at least Nisken in tow.”
He helped her from the palace and to the nearest edge of the city. The inviting desert glowed bronze in the evening light.
“Do one more thing for me, Zarif, will you?”
Suspicion returning, he took a step away from her. “How do you know my name?”
“Because I do. Tell Aamir what you did, all right? Don’t tell the queen or the Royal Assassins. Aamir needs to know it first. Understand?”
“No.”
She tried to make her tired brain function. “Look... you know how... you know how Aamir was secretly supporting Rai—the queen? And how, um, the Royal Assassins faked their deaths a few times? It’s... it’s like that with Aamir and me. This is all a clever... something...” she trailed off wearily.
“Where are you going?”
A smile curled up around Kaislyn’s mouth. “Back to where I lurk.”
Ignoring the boy’s puzzled face, she limped into the desert.
That was... not as much of a disaster as it usually is.
“I’m learning,” Kaislyn growled.
4 | Ikaros
It was almost dusk as the Second City gates came into view. Her clothes were a sticky, bloody mess. Nothing so unusual there, but returning to the Second City after the First had been harder than she thought it would be. Ikaros’ lurking presence in the mountains forced her to sneak in and out of the mountains as she limped and shivered her way to the Second City.
Kaislyn’s bloody fingers slipped as she exerted pressure against the makeshift bandage on her shoulder. Ikaros had ambushed her in the hills above the Second City right when she thought she’d successfully avoided him. Kaislyn had narrowly missed his dagger, ducking in time for it to bury more harmlessly in her shoulder, saving her from another death injury.
Still, she hadn’t liked the way he’d giggled at missing her. Didn’t like how he waved as she Shifted to her birth life and stumbled the single step that separated her from the Second City proper and the mountains.
The gates would be closing soon for the night and stragglers were hastening through them in either direction. Kaislyn slipped through them with a grateful sigh. Almost there.
The streets, some dark, others lit with flickering torches, made Kaislyn feel dizzy. She hadn’t gone far from the gates when a familiar figure rushed up to her.
“Kaislyn!”
She stopped, confused. “Keera? What are you doing here?”
“I—” the servant girl stopped. Her dark eyes widened. “You’re bleeding! What happened to you?”
Kaislyn grimaced. “I happened.”
Without having to ask, Keera took Kaislyn’s good arm and helped her along the street. Their progress was slow, but steadier than Kaislyn had managed on her own. As they approached a street corner, Kaislyn flicked a few fingers toward the quieter street. “Turn here. Quick,” she said.
“But that isn’t the right way.”
“Quickly!” Kaislyn hissed as she felt the phantom weight of a sharp blade slicing into her neck. Blazes!
Keera helped her a few more steps before Kaislyn had to sink onto a doorstep.
“What’s wrong?” Keera asked. She looked around them nervously.
“Go back to the city gates. It’s not that far from here yet. Tell the guards who you are and that you were with me and I need help. One of them at least should come with you.”
Keera eyed her. “But—”
“Go!”
Anxious, Keera darted from the street. None too soon.
The breath left Kaislyn’s lungs in a sharp gasp and she mentally counted the seconds as paralysis set in. It lasted a minute before fading gradually, movement returning in an outward spiral from her neck. She supposed she ought to be grateful that she had warning every time that death returned to haunt her.
Kaislyn pressed her hand more firmly against her shoulder and closed her eyes. How long did it take Keera to get help? She didn’t think Davol’s guards would be difficult to convince. At last she heard Keera’s quick, light step returning and she opened her eyes in relief.
“What took... Blast the mountains! Not you!”
Kam rocked back on his heels, looking pleased with himself. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Kaislyn turned a glare to Keera. “Why did you get him?”
Keera kept her distance from both of them. “I trust Kam.”
“Kam is a treacherous, cowardly thief!”
Even in the gloom, Kaislyn could see Keera’s cheeks turning pink. “I’m not going to help someone who did what you did to Kam.”
“As far as I can see he’s still alive!”
Not a very convincing argument, girl.
“You stole everything from him in Ir-Ime, framed him for a heinous crime, and took away his very reputation. And then you had the nerve to follow him here just to ruin any chance of a new life he hoped to build here. Do you derive pleasure from continually destroying someone’s life?”
Kaislyn turned incredulous eyes toward Kam. “Is she serious?”
He smirked at her. “It’s true.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Keera, that Kam is lying to you?”
“All you ever do is lie and deceive people,” Keera
said hotly. “I wasn’t sure of Kam’s story until after everything that happened with the queen and Zarif. Then I understood just what he meant by how you destroy everyone you meet to prove you’re as powerful as your parents.”
There was just enough twisted truth to what Keera said to keep Kaislyn from retorting.
“Get up,” Kam ordered. “We don’t have much time.”
She didn’t move. “Kam, it’s over. Whatever you’ve planned won’t work. Jaden’s dead.”
“He’s not!”
“I killed him myself.”
Kam rocked back on his heels as if he’d been struck.
“Maybe you should reconsider your plans,” she added as Kam began to shake his head back and forth.
“Who’s Jaden?” Keera asked in the growing silence.
“Her sweetheart in Ir-Ime,” Kam said, not looking away from Kaislyn.
“She murdered him?” Keera whispered, horrified.
“Yes,” said Kam.
“No!” Kaislyn said at the same time. She struggled to her feet. Her vision dipped black for a moment. “Jaden attacked me, Keera. I was defending myself.”
Kam stirred. “The gates are going to close soon. Let’s go.”
Kaislyn renewed the pressure on her shoulder. “How’d you even know I’d be here tonight?”
Keera turned admiringly to Kam. “He said you’d be here. He predicted you’d be injured and in need of help.”
“Predicted?” Kaislyn tried to get her tired brain to work. Gates. Injured and in her birth life. That’s why Ikaros was so giddy earlier. He’d already set Kam up for this.
“You’re stalling now,” Kam said. He drew a long knife from his belt. “Start walking. That way.”
“I’d run, Kam. You attacked my parents and I haven’t forgotten that. I won’t ever forget that.”
“Fine words from you! Walk!”
Kaislyn started wearily down the street. Keera walked at a cautious distance behind them.
When the city gate came into view, Kam drew next to her, hiding his knife, and wrapping an arm around her shoulders, as if to support her. At that point, he really was, she thought numbly.
The Immortal Walker Page 24
