by Blake Rivers
Ami shifted closer, her back flat against the side of a house, its old plaster flaking white and falling across her shoulders. She brushed it off, glimpsing a window to the side where a slim slither of light filtered through its frosted panes, betraying three huddled figures within. A face turned, eyes wide, and then the flame was doused.
“I find it hard to believe,” Romany continued, “and yet, perhaps you too have your uses.”
The door slammed shut.
Ami stepped out into the street, the silver path before her broken by her shadow, cutting a fine figure of soft curves and braided hair against the stone. She didn’t want to spend too long in the open for she was certain she was being watched; a quick glance down the street revealed further flamed auras barely hidden behind curtain and glass—and so, stepping quickly to the doorway, Ami lifted her katana to the night and pushed her power to its tip. It sparked just the once, and the steel blushed white before lengthening and stretching, sneaking up the wall beyond the door, latching somewhere at the edge of the shadowy roof. She gave the sword a swift tug, and holding to the handle tight was drawn hurriedly up the side of the building. At the top she let go and landed on all fours upon the soft, dark thatch.
With her sword clasped beneath her arm, Ami crawled like a cat across the straw, making her way over the roof in silence.
She heard nothing from below and worried for Hero.
The building reached quite far back from the street and it took her longer than she’d have liked to get to the far side, but once there she dropped easily into the dark alley below. It was dirty and wretched, but she held a crouch low to the ground, surveying for movement and threat; but she was alone.
A light mist swirled around her feet as she walked to the door set flush against the back of the building. It stood slightly ajar as if she were expected.
*
“What do you want with Princess Ami?”
The disrobed man stepped forward, brandishing his sword toward her like a child with a stick. It would have been amusing, had it not been so insulting.
Romany lifted her arm and the sword flew a flame, burning red hot in his hand.
“What I want with her? Such impertinence for one who should be on his knees to me!” The man dropped the sword and screamed in pain as she clenched her fist tight. His insides were in her grasp, each slippery length of intestine wrapped twice around her fingers; it gave her a moment’s amusement to watch him squirm. His neck strained, tendons pulling like wires as he growled between his teeth—a vicious animal trapped. It bored her.
“Let him go, please,” Raven pleaded, the man she’d seduced so easily. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Bored,” she whispered, throwing her hand out to him. He fell to his knees beside the other, crumpled like a wilted flower, its petals fight-worn and dying. “I’ll take you as fodder. Don’t worry you’ll be useful, I’ll—What?”
Mattus had turned to face her—oh, what a horror. The necrosis had spread far and wide, rotting the old man from the outside in. White bone protruded now, clear of the black flapping flesh, and his exposed neck was bruised purple, angry red welts boiling through the surface of his skin. His nose was almost non-existent, as if someone had come along and chewed it from his face; yet he had strength enough to right himself and speak to her.
“You don’t want to—” he coughed, wheezed, and held his throat to continue, “—harm the girl. She is special, something…unique.”
“What could be so unique about this stranger, this girl, dear Mattus?” A smell wafted from him, that of over-ripe fruit and rotting meats. Puss drained from his jaw as he struggled to talk. She stepped toward him. “Tell me, dear one?” She stroked his beard, clumps of hair falling at her touch. He was coming apart.
“She’s a unicorn,” he managed, his eyes closing as he swallowed hard. “A unicorn who turns into a girl. I’ve seen it.”
Romany looked sharply down at the slumped girl, barely stirring against her companions. “I find it hard to believe, and yet, perhaps you too have your uses.” There had been unicorns buried deep in his mind. Unicorns, magical, powerful. “Let me see what you’ve seen.” With reluctance, but no hesitation, Romany placed her hand against his face, letting their minds touch.
His eyes opened wide.
A wind rose up around them, swinging the door shut, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. She saw the girl, a wood, a unicorn without a horn. And now she grasped the old man’s head in both her hands, intent on pulling all she could from him.
“Noo,” his voice barely a breath, “please, Mada—am—”
Romany closed her eyes as the images flooded in. She didn’t hear the crack of his skull, though her fingers passed beneath the bone to sink into his brain, scratching and clawing. Her eyelids fluttered, his mind emptying into hers.
A unicorn yes. She saw one upon the beach, its horn sheathed in black, a booted foot breaking the crystal; she saw it charging forward with only a stump. She saw the girl doubled and lethal, head to foot, two flaming torches of power. How was this possible? She was witnessing a battle, a battle Mattus had seen. A book, a quill running across its pages, a fever upon the hand as it sketched and wrote of the memories surfaced—and yes, memories they were.
A blood curdling scream broke the bond and Mattus’s lifeless body dropped to the floor beside the others. Romany searched the darkness. “Reveal yourself!” she shouted, lifting her hands above her head and gathering to her a white light between them. It was a fiery sun that spun and broke open to flood all with a splintered light. A second of muted illumination chased the shadows, preceding a low hum, and then the blast. It was an ear-splitting boom that tore the walls from the lower floor, blowing the back of the building clean out, scattering plaster, brick and stone; book pages shredded as dust and debris rose in a white cloud, to pass quickly into the night. It happened fast, the wound fresh and clean, clear and dark.
Those by her feet had taken cover as screams howled out through the night in fear. She paid them no mind, for in that instant, as the now three sided hovel settled and bowed, and the night displayed the infinite heavens through the empty space remaining, she felt her presence.
“Come out and play, Princess.” Romany stepped forward into the rubble, her heels crushing all to dust.
*
Movement, a whispered step, a shift in shade so subtle; there was someone else just inside. Ami raised her sword and pushed the door open, revealing the dim profile of a man leant against a wall. He turned to her, surprised, his grey eyes silver discs, mirroring her double in the moonlight.
“You,” Britanus gasped, “but you should not have come b—ba—oh—” His words hung in the air unfinished as he raised his hands to his ears as if listening to a faraway sound. A moan escaped his pursed lips, a moan that quickly became a wail. His jaw fell open and strained, dislodging with an audible click. Ami rushed forward to catch him as he collapsed, his bloodshot eyes haemorrhaging within.
“Reveal yourself!” A voice, her voice.
“Inside,” the man croaked, pointing through an inner doorway, “quick.”
A light consumed the rooms then, illuminating all a lightning-white. In that moment, everything was visible, from the shelves and dusty stacks of books, to the mouse-holes carved so masterfully through the walls; each shadow that’d hidden had been dispersed, every sin brought into the open. Something was happening, something very bad. She dragged him and pushed him toward the doorway as a low thrum buzzed, a thrum that became a drone like a thousand bees—and then without warning, a sudden boom.
Ami dived through just in time as the walls behind tore apart. Stone steps rose to meet her as she tumbled into darkness and landed face first upon the earthen floor where sound was now a single note hiding the thud of her racing heart. It was the cry of her neck, twisted and hurt, the taste of the blood in her mouth, her tongue bitten and swollen; it was the ringing from the blast that had happened a moment ago, so far, far away. She loo
ked up across the short blades of grass to the sunlit platform of stone and marble to see the welcome smile of her shadow-self, standing between arches and columns.
“How did I get here?” she asked, making her way toward the steps, shaking out her bruises and hurts. She knew her lips had moved, but the single note carried over all and made her deaf and mute. Shadow Ami crossed the distance, meeting her at the steps, and lay her hands against her face in greeting. The touch was intimate and allowed her to speak directly to her thoughts.
“You are always here.”
“Is this only in my mind?”
“Yes, and no,” the other said. “Does this place really exist? You have been here, but how can you say it’s not in my mind? Our minds are linked. You can always come here.”
Ami smiled, her body healing fast, her hearing slowly returning. Bird song and a rustled breeze…she looked around, finding the stone walkway as it’d always been, connecting the low building behind her to the castle tower in front. The roses grew still, ever-reds, the petals peeling perfectly to the ground and flipping, dancing.
“You have to go back,” the other said. “You know you do.”
“How can I defeat her? Do you know?”
“Yes,” she said, nodding her head, “and it won’t be easy, but you can do it. Believe in yourself, always. Play to your strengths. She is old, inflexible. Adapt, overcome.”
Before Ami could speak, her feet were taken from her and she was dragged backward into dark forest, branches now dead fingers searching and scratching, a woodland where blue light filtered through black trunks, where she could scream and run and never, ever leave. The green of the clearing was long gone, the blue sky replaced with shadow and deceit, all shades of black and blue, and then, finally, just black.
Ami opened her eyes.
All was dark and dust and ash, a magical scattering of stars the only light, seen through the doorway above.
Her sword lay across her chest, and gripping it tight in her hand, she rolled over on the cold floor to look for Britanus.
Was he dead?
She was still scanning the dark and empty ground for a corpse when Romany blacked out the stars.
*
“The scribbler. All this time I never knew you were here, keeping low. I know it’s you, filthy scribbler.” She pushed his face to one side, then the other with the heel of her shoe. He was alive, which is more than she could say for Mattus. Not that it mattered. “You were hiding.” She sighed. “You were hiding.”
Romany stepped over him and looked up at the moon whose light bathed her a stark white, her skin iridescent, her hair as black as onyx. It had always been her constant companion and had showed almost no change in all of eternity. They were similar in many ways, the lunar and she, infinite, forever, unchanging, created from everything and yet ultimately desolate and barren. Still, it was a force for change, just as she; it commanded the tides as she could, invoking mood and passion as she did. She meditated on it now, thinking of all she’d learned and all she’d ever known. Mythology had begun to work its way into reality, and possibility opened the way for probability. A unicorn, a creature she’d never mused on, never thought about or seen, a story known, yet a nursery rhyme she’d never heard. And it was here. She’d seen the memories of one who’d witnessed a horn being broken, though how he’d seen it she didn’t know. What was the Assassin Princess without her unicorn sword? For that is surely what it was.
She was nearby, felt like a breath of wind kissing her skin, goose-flesh rising and settling as she idly touched her armlet.
Romany scanned the debris. The blast had taken out more than the back of the one building, but also the houses behind it, too. Roofs were collapsed or collapsing, sagging and settling, creaking and snapping. Straw thatch scattered brick-strewn alleys. But the princess didn’t hide behind the carnage. No, she was closer than that.
To her right was a darkened doorway, the wall around it cracked but mostly unharmed. The scribbler lay barely breathing at its threshold. With a swift kick to his side, Romany sent him through the doorway and down the shadowed steps, his cries hushed whimpers she cared nothing for. How could she not have known that the scribbler of falsehoods still lived within her lands? How could she have been so blind? He hit the ground below with a faraway thud, falling into darkness; and at that moment, Romany became certain.
She’s down there.
She turned her attentions to the front of the building that held its structure with ragged pillars, a vague wooden arch bowing and splintering. Books were spread everywhere, torn, ripped pages amongst skins of gouged and ruined leather, and in the centre of the chaos were the three strangers who barely moved beneath a layer of plaster and dirt. Mattus lay dead, broken and rotting, and to his side was the girl—the unicorn. She moved closer to them, rounding the desk where the flamed candle swayed its final dance, almost done. Beside it was a large volume, now dusted in a light shower of dirt. She wiped it clean, revealing a sketch that slid in and out of shadow. She studied it for a moment.
“The splitting of a man? Well, what an interesting read.” The candle tipped over with a wave of her hand and kindled against the pages. Fire flourished and ravaged quickly and efficiently, consuming all and leaving nothing but smouldering, historic ash. “There are no words to describe…just, no words…”
“You would burn it,” the man said, stirring against the girl, sitting himself with his back to the door. “You would burn a history that paints you as a conquering monster.”
“Does it?” Romany blew upon the pages, the cinders rising and falling in golden embers. “I never much trusted books. They tell lies.”
“What have you done to Princess Ami?” he demanded, trying to rise to his feet. “Where is she?”
“Sit down,” she said, and the man fell back to the floor. “I have done nothing to your princess yet. However, she is due a visit I think. She was a guest of mine, yet rudely departed before I had chance to tell her what happened next. Ah, but does it matter? Truly? Surely the stories of the past are not nearly as interesting as those yet to be told?”
“She will destroy you,” he whispered, so small and pathetic; a weakling man. He leant against the door using all his strength to remain upright, while the brave Raven conserved his, his head bowed, his breathing steady as he listened. The girl was motionless. So much power, and yet not a single flicker?
“No,” she said, looking off into the night behind the shattered window. “I don’t think she will.” With her mind focussed, Romany travelled now into the earth, into the layers of basalt beneath the land and the sea. She reached so far down that she could feel the cracks in reality scoring her skin; and behind them he lay in wait, hungry, angry. He stirred in the dark place beyond and below, and the ground shivered once more.
*
Time was getting short, and Ami knew the longer she stayed hidden, the more certain the danger to Hero, Raven and Florence. The woman’s shadow had fled, leaving the dark mass of Britanus’s broken body at the foot of the steps. She watched his crumpled chest hitch and release in short sharp breaths, while above, Romany’s words trailed off and faded. Somehow, Ami was sure that her face would be hanging slack from her bones, void of all life, her dark eyes dry and staring as a corpse stares, into the beyond of nothing.
These were stolen moments, but to do what?
She stayed where she was, listening for the woman to come back, to make a move, but all was still. Down the street she heard crying, sobbing, while further out across the town mothers cradled children with words of comfort, to the fearful, to the sick, to the scared. All around were the creaks and groans of a building sighing its last, getting ready for the final fall, and the subtle scuttle of mice tracing the edges of the moonlight, rats scavenging dry boxes stacked against the walls; no food here but us, she thought, lowering her sword.
Faint cracks had crept soundlessly across the stone floor like the subtle web of a silent spider. She traced them, jumping at the grated w
hisper:
“Princess,” voiced between laboured breaths, “come now.”
With a quick look to the empty doorway, Ami scooted over to the man, carefully rolling him over to face her. Oh, what a mess. There was nothing that could describe the pulp that had once been lips and cheeks. Only his eyes seemed truly alive, now a bright blue, the source of their own light. Ami cradled him against her as the world trembled, the hairline cracks beneath them widening into fiery cuts. They gaped in grins, breaking the whole into mini islands of dark stone. She was surprised the floor hadn’t caved in beneath them, but somehow it’d held.
“Come now, Princess,” a voice mocked from above, a shadow leaning black between the stars, murk and moonlight. She’d awoken. “You know, I don’t have to come down there to destroy you. You know that.” Ami felt the power of those words, could almost see them slip down each step in turn, dripping foul like oil spilt. She saw the burning eyes of deep red fury, though they failed to find her in the darkness. “I need you though, and I think you know that, too, so I want you to follow me to the palace. And you will, for I’m sure you wouldn’t leave your friends to the fate of so many before them.”
Hero. Raven. Florence.
Her instincts told her to lay low, yet her heart told her to leap, but before she could decide on either action, the rest of the building exploded. Walls that had remained were blown apart in the blast, collapsing the doorway and sealing it with brick rubble and fallen beams. Further sounds were muted and unimportant as Ami uttered a single sobbed word.
“Hero…” A whisper, the loudest cry through the cloud of dust now settling.
“He’s alive,” Britanus said, though his voice hadn’t come from beneath her, but instead from all around. It was disembodied, too close, like the coming of a storm. Above them a wind howled through the fallen rubble, yet none lived beneath it, she was sure, just as she was sure that Romany was gone.
