Brant proceeded slowly, new to Tashijan, but he seemed to know where he was going, moving with a dogged determination. Perhaps he had been given a map to the towers.
As they progressed, Dart kept easily hidden. As usual, the stairs were crowded. She had no difficulty keeping him in sight while staying back herself. As she trailed her quarry, she heard snatches of conversation. With each level she passed, she slowly pieced together some mishap that had befallen a flippercraft landing atop Stormwatch. Word had traveled faster than the trumpet’s blare: of a fire, burning mekanicals, but order had been restored. No deaths.
Then she heard Tylar’s name.
Her feet slowed to listen to the rest of a knight’s conversation with a comely older maid. He leaned an elbow on the wall. Dart noted the Fiery Cross embroidered on his shoulder. “The regent arrives with as much turmoil as he’s beset our fair land. Is it any wonder Warden Fields disapproves of his position at Chrismferry?”
Dart continued past, lest she draw the knight’s eye. But it seemed the maid’s ample bosom had captured his attention full enough.
She hurried down a few more steps, dread clutching her throat. So it had been Tylar’s airship that had landed so roughly! He must have come early. She stopped at the next landing.
Enough with this foolishness. She needed to get back to the castellan’s hermitage. Kathryn might need her.
“You!”
The shout startled her-as did the hand that grabbed her roughly and pulled her around. She expected it to be Brant, wise to her spying.
But another familiar countenance pushed close to her, almost nose to nose. Pyllor. She smelled the sour ale on the squire’s breath.
“What are you doing out of your cage, Hothbrin? Come looking for some more lessons?” He shoved her against the wall with an angry laugh.
Dart struggled against him, but he outweighed her by two stones.
“’Course,” he slurred, “we’ll have to manage without Swordmaster Yuril. None of her coddling this time.”
His guffaw sounded more like a bark-but Dart was deaf to it, hearing only the beat of ravens’ wings behind his laugh. She tensed, remembering when another man had touched her so roughly.
Behind Pyllor, Dart saw two more of Pyllor’s friends. Dart didn’t know their names but recognized their hard eyes. She also noted the Fiery Cross emblems crudely stitched to their shirt collars.
Folks passed them on the stairs, barely noting them. Such ribaldry and hassling were not unknown among the ranks. But Dart read the mean intent in Pyllor’s eyes. The Fiery Cross bore no love for the castellan-or those who served her. Swords had been drawn over the division.
One of his companions grabbed Dart’s other shoulder. “Let’s do her?” he hissed at Pyllor, his eyes shining with malicious fire.
The second squire hesitated, half-blocking the way. “The castellan’s page-we don’t dare.”
Pyllor flat-handed him aside. His other fist knotted in Dart’s half cloak and tugged her toward an open door. “Bugger that sellwench up in her hermitage. We’re the warden’s men. She needs to learn who truly rules here.”
Dart fought against the fist in her cloak, trying to shed the garment and twist away. But her other elbow was snatched by the more exuberant of Pyllor’s two companions. The other hung back still, glancing to the stairs. But all interest still seemed caught upon the crashed flippercraft.
Dart was half-carried through a doorway into a dark, empty room. A single brazier burnt near the back, offering a meager glow.
An iron rod protruded from it, buried in the embers.
“Get your flat arse in here!” Pyllor’s friend said to their reluctant cohort.
He obeyed, caught in the wake of the other two.
“And latch the door!” Pyllor called out.
Dart stamped on the squire’s foot, desperate to escape, heart pounding in her throat. Raven wings echoed. Did they mean to rape her?
Pyllor swore and threw her deeper into the room, hard enough to trip her up. She skidded on the stone, ripping her leggings, bloodying her knee.
“Act like a skaggin’ wench…and we’ll treat you like one!”
A coarse laugh encouraged Pyllor.
The door closed behind him, sinking the room into gloom.
Pyllor’s partner crossed to the brazier, wrapped up his hand in a cloth, and pulled the rod from the coals. Its iron end glowed a fiery crimson. A branding iron. The tip was shaped into a circle bisected by crossed lines.
The symbol of the Fiery Cross.
It was not rape that they intended, but another violation of body.
“Where should we mark her?” the bearer asked. “The thigh, like we did that Moor Eld boy?”
Pyllor glared at Dart. “No. Somewhere where all will see.” He touched his cheek. “It’s time the Fiery Cross sent a message to that sellwench up in her hermitage.”
Dart scrambled back as the others laughed. She sought her only weapon. She reached down to her scraped knees, blessing her hands with her own blood. She needed Pupp.
Dart glanced around and only now realized she was alone.
Pupp was gone.
Pyllor stalked toward her. “Grab her.”
Brant knew he was being hunted.
He had sensed it for the last three levels as he descended the stairs, a pressure building behind his breastbone. He searched behind him, but the curve of the tower stairs betrayed him. All he saw was men and women in cloaks or various drapes of finery. A washerwoman with a tied bundle of linen bustled past him, almost knocking him aside. He caught the scent of soap and perfumed oil from her burden, intended for someone of higher station.
He took another step down. He was thwarted from much further progress by a tide of people heading up. He had almost reached the bottom of the tower, and some excitement seemed to be drafting folks upward, like smoke up a chimney, something about an arriving flippercraft.
Pressed against a wall, Brant finally noted the heat at his throat. His hand rose to touch the scar on his neck, then the stone resting below it. The stone wasn’t burning like the last time, flaring with a blistering fire. It was only warm, as if slightly fevered. Both curious and disturbed, he tested its black surface with his fingers.
As he stood, the stone warmed further, a match to the tension mounting in his chest. Brant took a step back up the stairs, then another. Under his fingertips, the stone heated to a toasty warmth. He reached the next landing, and a deeper burn surged, the stone becoming a coal in his fingers.
Wincing, he stopped. He remembered the daemon summoned by the stone when last it had flared. He searched all around him. Nothing.
At his throat, the stone began to cool.
No.
He sensed that whatever had been hunting him was now retreating. He could not lose it.
Brant took another step up, and the stone warmed ever so slightly. Encouraged, he hurried toward the next landing. With each step, the black stone responded, stoking higher with an inner fire. If he stopped or was slowed, it would cool again. He did not tarry, climbing two steps at a time now, caught in the flow of residents heading higher.
As he passed the next landing, Brant felt the stone suddenly lose its fiery edge. With each step farther, it cooled more.
Brant swung around and fought the tide again, heading back down, returning to the landing below.
The stone’s burn ignited again.
He left the stairs and entered the passageway.
It was nearly empty. He rushed forward, using the threaded rock like a lodestone, following the trail of heat. He was a quarter way down the hall when the stone flared to a roasting fire.
Brant gasped but knew he was close.
He yanked the cord from around his neck. He held out the necklace, letting the talisman swing. On one pass, the arc of the dangling stone suddenly stopped-halted by the backside of a molten bronze beast.
It appeared out of the air at his knees, facing away, toward a door. Its body seemed to melt
and flow, constantly struggling to hold its beastly shape, half wolf, half lion. In its fierce churn, Brant sensed its fury. It wafted outward like the heat from an open forge.
Then the beast lunged away, vanishing from the touch of the stone, and through a solid door.
Brant straightened.
Then heard the scream.
Dart struggled to escape her own half cloak. It had been pulled over her head by the larger of Pyllor’s cohorts. She kicked and felt her boot strike flesh. A loud oof responded.
“Get’er legs, Ryskold!” Pyllor said.
Someone grabbed her knee.
Dart fought with a rising fury that grew to a blinding ferocity. A hand broke free of her cloak, and she raked her nails at whoever clutched her. She connected, digging deep.
A bellow of surprise erupted.
The grip loosened, and she twisted away, freeing herself-but only momentarily. Whoever she’d wounded lunged atop her, meaning to pin her with his greater weight. Dart held him off with an elbow and a hand. In the struggle, her fingers stumbled upon a familiar shape at the other’s waist.
She grabbed it and pulled.
The sword slid free of its sheath. Her attacker let loose a cry of pain, accidentally cut by his own blade.
Dart rolled to the side and to her feet. She lifted the stolen sword to face the three across the room.
In her hand was no wooden sword-this one was steel.
The bolder of Pyllor’s two friends clutched his forearm. His shirt had been cleaved and darkened with his blood. His eyes had narrowed with pain, but burnt with a fiery anger.
In the glow of the single brazier, Dart’s stolen blade shone brightly. As did Pyllor’s own blade as he pulled it free. A squire’s blade. No black diamond adorned its pommel, marking a true knight, for certainly no honor was to be found here.
“Leave her to me,” he called to the others unnecessarily.
His wounded partner’s sheath was already empty. The other had simply backed away, plainly refusing to be drawn further into the struggle here.
Pyllor sneered. “First I’ll bloody you, then we’ll get you branded up good-for all to see.”
Dart remained silent and took a warding stance. But this was no sparring match. Pyllor came at her with a brutal and heavy lunge.
She refused to be drawn into a block, not against the more muscled attacker. She simply turned her blade and let his steel sing along hers. She leaned her left shoulder back and Pyllor’s sword tip passed her harmlessly.
Surprised, her attacker was momentarily off balance.
And close.
Expressionless, Dart demonstrated how well she had learned Pyllor’s prior lesson, how sword fighting sometimes required more than a blade. As he stumbled near, she kneed out with her other leg, striking him square in the groin.
He cried out and fell back.
At that moment, motion stirred at the corner of her eye. Pupp burst through the latched door. He was a molten glow, a blur of impotent fury.
Though relieved, Dart kept her focus on Pyllor. He wobbled, clutching himself with one hand, but the other lifted his sword.
“You’re dead,” he hissed.
Pupp danced up to her, but she had no time to bloody him, to use the Grace in her most essential humour to call him forth.
Pyllor came at her again, more hobbled and more cautious. She read the cunning reflected in his eyes. She readied herself, but she knew he was the better swordsman.
He thrust, testing her this time.
She parried, but he smacked back her blade and came in with a feint, followed by a savage thrust. She barely nicked her hilt up to block the tip. Still, the blow reverberated up her arm and knocked her back a step.
Pyllor sneered and lowered his sword.
Dart took advantage of the satisfaction in his expression. She lunged out, sweeping into the opening. He dropped his hilt even farther, lowering his guard. Dart realized her mistake-but it was too late. She was committed. Her momentum carried forward her attack.
Pyllor suddenly shoved out his elbow and twisted his sword’s tip in the opposite direction. Dart recognized the opening maneuver. A perfectly executed Naethryn’s Folly.
And she had been drawn inescapably into it.
He looped his sword in a side-sweep, trapping her thrusted blade-then tugged his elbow to his side and turned on his back heel.
Dart’s sword sprang from her fingertips with a ring of steel. It sailed, hilt over tip, through the air, and clanged against the stone floor.
Pyllor did not wait-he drove his sword for her belly.
Dart had only one lesson left. One again taught to her by the squire. She grabbed bare-handed for his blade. Her fingers closed over the steel. She shoved with her palm.
Steel sliced with a painless kiss.
She would lose fingers.
Before she could react, a crash sounded to her right, and the door cracked open with a pop of its latch. Pyllor faltered in surprise. Dart pushed his sword aside and dropped back.
Light flooded the dim room from the hall outside. A dark figure stood limned in the doorway. In the stunned silence, he took in the scene before him.
Pyllor turned his sword toward the intruder. He eyed him, judging him. This was no knight, but someone in a rather plain cloak. Someone of no consequence.
“Begone! This is none of your concern!”
Ignoring him, the figure stepped inside. The blinding light fell from his shoulders and revealed face and form.
The bronze boy.
Brant.
How…?
“Let her go,” he said with a dread calm.
Dart glanced back to Pyllor. Surely this was over. Agony flared up her arm from her sliced palm. She clenched a fist against it, trying to squeeze it away.
Pyllor refused to back down. His fury, stoked by the thwarted attack, found a fresh target in the intruder, believing the younger man to be no more than one of the faceless underfolk, what with his worn leathers and scuffed boots.
Pyllor dropped his sword lower. But Dart knew this was another feint, a trick meant to dull an opponent’s guard. At his back, Dart spotted a dagger, hidden out of sight.
“Don’t-” she said and reached with her injured hand. Blood spattered from her fingertips and spilled from her palm.
But it never struck the floor.
The humour splashed upon the waiting form below.
Dart felt Pupp appear, blessed with blood, drawn fully into this world. He burst into solidity with a flare of ruddy fire. He leaped toward Pyllor at the exact time the squire twisted and flung his dagger toward the intruder.
Pupp sailed through the air, a molten bronze arrow. He hit Pyllor in the arm, taking it off at the elbow. Pyllor screamed.
The attack, though late, proved unnecessary. The thrown dagger missed its intended target as Brant sidestepped it, as if anticipating it all along. It clattered into the hall outside.
Pyllor fell back onto his rear, holding up his severed arm in disbelief. The edge of his shirt still smoked. The stump of his limb stuck out, blackened and seared.
More shouts of horror rose from Pyllor’s companions. They fled toward the door, away from Pupp, who now circled Pyllor on the floor.
Brant allowed the others to flee as he moved toward Dart.
Pyllor cowered, wide-eyed in terror and shock. He blubbered incoherently, scooting away, abandoning his sword as he pushed with his remaining hand.
Brant touched her arm. “We should be away. Now.” His eyes were on Pupp, but he seemed little surprised.
Dart allowed herself to be drawn toward the door.
“Call off your daemon,” Brant said.
Dart had no strength to argue. “To me, Pupp.”
His fiery form continued to circle Pyllor, hackles raised, snarling fire.
“To me,” Dart urged more firmly. She remembered what had befallen two other men, back in the rookery in Chrismferry. She had witnessed Pupp’s mercy then. A part of her wished the
same for Pyllor.
Pupp seemed to sense this, glancing back at her. Beyond the fire of his eyes, she saw her own fury reflected. And again something not of this world. Beyond her ability to fathom.
Dart met that fiery gaze, acknowledged the bloodlust, both in Pupp and in her own heart. Still, she felt Brant’s touch on her elbow, urgent but patient. She responded to it.
“To me,” she commanded again. “Now.”
Pupp turned back to Pyllor. The squire moaned and pushed against the wall. A trail of wetness flowed from under Pyllor as he fouled himself in his terror. But Pupp finally obeyed. He swung around and trotted sullenly and darkly back to her. He brought with him a whiff of burnt blood-her own and perhaps Pyllor’s.
Brant led her to the door.
Down the hallway, a sharp cry of daemon rang from the central stair.
Brant glanced at her. Dart noted the flecks of gold in his emerald eyes. “Where?” he asked.
“This way,” Dart said and hurried away from the shouts. She led him toward the far end of the hallway. A back stair led to the warren of rooms and narrow halls of Tashijan’s underfolk and small staff.
“It fades,” Brant said beside her, staring at Pupp’s form.
“The Grace that gave him substance has been consumed.”
Pupp slipped back into his ghostly form. And none too soon. A door flew open, revealing an elderly manservant in house livery, drawn by the commotion. Dart and Brant hurried past, while Pupp padded through the man’s legs and the open door as if they were air.
Once they reached the back stairs, they ran down a full flight. Brant asked her as they fled, “What Grace is this you speak of?”
“Something…” She shifted her wounded fist, wrapped and snugged in her half cloak. “Something in my blood.”
Dart knew that what she had revealed was supposed to be kept secret, but she had neither the strength nor the will to roust up some fabrication. Besides, the strange young man seemed to know more than he expressed.
Like how he had come so opportunely to the door a moment ago.
It seemed both had secrets neither was ready to fully bare.
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