"Where's your bodyguard?"
"Even he can't be expected to never relieve himself," she said before facing him. "The Blades will be here in less than three days. They don't have as far to come as our original intention."
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"My reinforcements might not be here in time, but I think we can work around that. After all, we have all the ruins to hide in. The Blades will have no choice but to search and we can ambush them with better knowledge of the terrain."
Her surety reminded him how rare it was she doubted herself. Even in the face of almost certain defeat, she fought to the end and won. Her cheeks showed her excitement.
"You told me this was an opportunity for you."
She quirked an eyebrow at the statement, which did nothing to stop him.
"That this might be a path to power."
"Yes?"
"You also told me we would find someone who could help me." Reminding her of her words did little to slow her often, but she tended to keep her promises. She made few, so that wasn't hard.
"I did." Her acknowledgment did him little good. She met his eyes without flinching and moved to caress his cheek. "I do not however think you need assistance. You have fought things before and won. Why should this be any different?"
When they were last together, he had been younger. His wounds fresher, though they wept under the cover of scars. Their time offered him something he never expected. Her betrayal the flame lighting the pyre for his trust.
"Helenia, would I have asked for help if I thought I could face this alone?"
She hesitated.
"I never ask for help."
"You don't need it," she said as she stood. "You can survive whatever this is without some evil meddling with you."
He carved the lines in her back with his eyes, remembering the feel of the dips under his hands. She held her head in her defiant way, her dare to contradict me pose. Yet she hid her eyes by looking away. He crossed the room to her.
"You believe too well of me," Warden said. "Too well by half." With a nervous tongue, he licked his lips then squinted as a bolt of pain shot through his skull and transformed into a wail he knew to be the beginning of something's end. Beneath him, his knees locked keeping him off the ground by habit. Helenia reached for him and he waved her off, stumbling back to the chair he vacated. He almost made it before he dropped to the floor and curled as a man beaten.
"Jalcina."
Since his escape, he thought of her often but rarely spoke her name. Now it came from between gritted teeth as he fought for control of his body and mind. The surge of desire to go to her rocked him and he clawed at the stone of the floor, one nail breaking bloody. Somewhere around him were footsteps, but he didn't know whose or where they were going. His world broke into shards each with a reflection of a face he only remembered from outside of a cell.
It wasn't, however, his pain he heard. Sorrow sought to suffocate him like a blanket drenched to keep out smoke. The day before, he knew they should leave. It became clearer now. Helenia unwittingly trapped him. Warden might have been better off had he run for the coast.
The ruins keened in pain and loss.
Death brushed him. Had Jalcina died? Unthinkable. Yet the thought pressed him. Baking heat and monotonous waves thrust themselves at him, battering his senses into forgetting he lay on a stone floor at the feet of a once lover. Rot and seawater pervaded. Though she was far away, she felt realer than Helenia he knew stood above him.
It left, the feelings taking wing and leaving him to lie shaking and exhausted. Eyes wearily shut he offered,
"Now do you believe?"
His limbs lay askew, drained of strength from the encounter. Helenia offered him a hand up and he swatted it away.
"I'll lie here."
Her footsteps receded. He let the cold of the stone against his body relieve the memory of oppressive heat. Jalcina existed in a place of darkness now surrounded by baking heat. Concern tinged his thoughts. He thought of the waves. He had traveled by boat with Leviana, but he could not remember the waves being so gentle. It moved like he imagined a cradle under a loving hand would.
So far apart from his love.
The thought stoned him. His love.
Whatever she may have been, she was not that. He had no one. She abandoned him to face his crime alone. He owed her nothing, least of all his heart.
When he finally gathered himself up from the floor, he reckoned much time had passed. Yet no one had come to disturb him. Helenia and those she hired were certainly discreet. A run of spittle decorated the side of his face and he went in search of a wash basin and water. Only then did he think he could face his employer and whatever she might have in mind.
He didn't search long to find her. The company gathered in what might have been a meeting hall before half of it disappeared into the abyss. Now it was a half-room open to the elements with some sparse tables at one end still usable. The others surrendered to the ravages of time and weather.
"We need to scour the area and prepare for their assault."
"How will they even know we're here?" one of her guards asked.
"I've laid the trap. Don't worry." She looked up as he entered. "And the bait has arrived."
Her previous care hid behind her strength. They both existed, but it seemed only one could show at a time. He nodded to her and dragged up a stool to sit nearby.
"So they're all going to come for the chance to get rid of him."
"He's the biggest blemish they've ever had on their reputation. They can't allow him to survive."
"Evil bastards," muttered one man. "To kill over their reputation."
"What do you think you do?" another said. "Murder for money, be the worst of the worst to insure you'll get hired." He shrugged and looked around. "Helenia wouldn't hire anyone she couldn't trust to get the job done. We're killers, all right, and the reputation is money."
"Good sense becomes a man," Helenia said.
"So does a good bit in his trousers says some ladies," came the glib reply. Several laughed but not her second in command who looked as if he might start slitting throats among his own men for the comment. With such a clean view of his face, Warden had to wonder if perhaps the man thought Helenia in love with him. He was in for a rude awakening. Warden could sympathize. If they survived, maybe they'd have a drink over it and one of them, the unlucky one, would stumble back to her bed and her capricious favor.
"What are we doing?" Warden asked. He recovered enough from his ordeal not to mind the sound of others, but he had little interest in spending much time in their company.
"We're preparing to go exploring," Helenia said. "We need to know this terrain better than our opponents if we hope to take them by surprise."
"You're talking about taking on highly trained assassins. They are not going to come at you like an invading army, you know this."
"I know. So we have perhaps a day to prepare. Which means finding the entrances to the city and knowing the routes to them. The Glass Blades will come under cover of night, hoping to use that advantage to take out as many of our number as possible. Everyone needs to be on guard."
"Do they know you're prepared to sacrifice them all?" His question drew dagger eyes, but not just from her.
"It's been explained," her second said.
"Has it?" Warden asked. "How many of you intend to go home after this? Take your share of the spoils and leave."
Helenia shook her head. "I paid them to aid me."
"But you didn't tell them their chances, did you?"
"If you think you'll sway them, you're mistaken. My men will not desert."
"Not under light of day, no, but when there is only the moon to witness and every shadow hides a blade, they'll leave. You can bet your take on it."
With that, he left with glowering eyes behind him. Helenia paid him little attention, but he might have persuaded some of the others to find courage enough to desert. How that helped him, he
hadn't figured, but he didn't want to see the bloody broken bodies the Blades would leave behind. One of them might well be Helenia. Could he mourn her?
He might find out.
The empty streets echoed with his rapid footsteps, the drenched sky from the day before turning over to a sliver of sun. The memory of summer warmth invited him to stay outdoors and his feet took him to the edge of the abyss. The stones around it ended with such suddenness it might have been a giant knife that cut the hole in the ground. Or was it something rising up from beneath? Standing on the edge, with the paltry sunshine seeking the bottom, he saw a flicker.
The moment after, night fell.
Warden spun taking in the city around him. The road before his feet ran away complete. Specters glided past him leaving behind their pain palpable in the air. It struck him like switches against bare skin leaving welts beneath his sleeves.
"You never lived," he breathed.
They never did.
On the road before him, a young man, younger than himself, stood strong in the center of what had once been a market square. The decorative stones of the road glimmered with their own light and drew sigils as he moved toward his visitor. Warden came close enough to touch but held that distance.
He saw no man, only a soul. A lost soul.
She killed my sister as she was meant to.
The specter looked toward the far away and Warden let his eyes drift over the remains before him.
The ones who have come before will come again. They will bring death. Have you come to bring me death?
Sorrow covered his face in a shroud and Warden imagined tears streaking his cheeks. Their eyes met and Warden saw suicide reflected back at him. Not an unfamiliar companion when one considered themselves a killer. There were those who saw no worth to life and sought to end it any way they could. Most lacked the courage to do it, but some were lost enough to ask it of others. He thought those worse than cowards. Too weak to take their own life, they would inflict a far worse pain on someone they claimed to love. How many times had he been hired to put an end to a lover?
Helenia came to mind. He started. How long had it been? They spoke in daylight. Now it seemed late night, the stars the only companions of an empty sky. Did she look for him? Perhaps. If she didn't find him, she would find her own way to complete her mission, whatever good it would do.
His thoughts drawn away from the man in his company, Warden shifted his gaze back to find him gone. The world returned to its ruin. The memories of happier times disappeared. His toes hung over the edge of the abyss as the velvet sky enshrouded the world. Somewhere behind him, a horse whickered.
"The ones who have come before will come again," he said. The phrase teased him as if it were some great unsolved riddle. "The ones who have come will come again. She—"
Jalcina. Leviana. Whatever name she owned. It no longer mattered. He sensed her and her rising strength beckoning. He needed to return to her. Leave Helenia to her games and tricks and return where he belonged. Together—
Warden snapped the thought off. He would not go. As the dragon he had been unable to resist. As a man, he would never allow himself the weakness.
"What are you staring at?"
The man at his elbow peered off into the distance following Warden's gaze.
"Nothing."
"Just as well. Queenie wants you," he said. "No use in keeping her waiting."
"No," Warden said. "No use at all."
The ones who have come before will come again. They were linked. Did she feel him so far away?
Helenia's expected messenger, the one leading the Glass Blades to them, did not appear in the days following. Every day past his arrival, she paced and grew angrier.
"He failed," she snarled. "He failed me."
"Perhaps he lost his way," her second offered. "He could have just as easily missed this place in open country." The look of daggers she gave him only made him square his shoulders. Warden watched the whole thing from a place on the stairs. It might have been fun to throw coals on the fire of Helenia's anger but he kept his peace.
"The Blades have disappeared back into the shadows by now. Without prey, there is no reason for them to hunt," the second said.
"So we've wasted our chance?"
"I didn't say that."
"Then speak plain."
"We need to chose another place, a better one. This ruin is forgotten. He must not have known how to get back."
"You trusted him to find his way."
"I did and when we meet again, he'll know the price for failing my trust. Yet you have to finish what you've begun. And for that, we need to go elsewhere."
Warden shifted position enough to remind them of his presence. Helenia shot him a nasty look and he shrugged.
"You're quiet."
"I'm bait."
"And what does the mouse think?" she asked.
Warden snorted.
"He's right. You can't ambush them if they don't come. So you'll have to move things."
He had no desire to go anywhere else. The stranger of the ruins appeared to him off and on always with the question of when was he to die. Warden didn't know when he was going to die, only that he would have a part in it. Fate had a way of announcing itself even he couldn't ignore. The ghosts walked day and night. One passed through Helenia as she stood watching him. He ignored it. They brought no harm or anything else. He tolerated them.
"Where should we go?"
Warden looked past her at her second. The man held his gaze in defiance. It didn't work.
"You need somewhere that will tell of my presence and make me an easy mark."
"Get the map."
The two men went in opposing directions.
"Where are you going?"
They both turned to look at her.
"Well?"
"I'm getting the map," the second said.
"I'm leaving because I don't care where we're going." Warden dipped out the door and onto the empty street. Listening for Helenia's footsteps behind him, he turned toward the center of town. No one stopped him; he didn't expect they would. Though he was still a captive, he didn't have to behave like one. The men let him wander.
Overcast sky gave him some relief from relentless sun on previous days, but he missed the warmth. Again he stood at the edge of the hole contemplating its depth and what might be found beneath the world. The awareness in him built over days. Knowledge something awaited him below. The talking stranger waited below.
He explored the edge with his hands, seeking some handhold. If he went down into the dark, what would he find: the key to his compulsion, redemption, or death? Climbing over the edge, he disappeared down into the dark like a spider.
What he saw as a bare flicker from the edge of the hole became a glimmer then a star, a pulsating star at the bottom of a well. It offered him warmth and an odd peace. Down and down he crawled as if he were reaching for the sky with a ladder to find this star. Under his hands, the wall ran rough then smooth, pocked then perfect. Nothing stayed the same, but it couldn't be called a pattern. On he went. Down. Closer. Finally, near enough to touch.
Warden reached the bottom of what he now knew to be a well. It could be nothing else, but it wasn't for water.
A well of power.
Across the star from him stood the stranger bathed in its light and very much a part of it.
"This is blood, but not yours," Warden said. "It feeds you."
We are the bringers of our own end. You were foretold. The ones who were will come again.
Warden snorted at the babble and crossed his arms. The phrase annoyed him in his inability to understand it. It answered nothing. Yet this one kept saying it.
We murdered for power. Now our power has created our murderers.
Around them, the walls changed. Images of height over the world and a group of others Warden felt like he knew. He recognized one face from a thousand carved images, Ancel, the Warrior God. He stood, back straight and sword at ready, again
st a group of others.
He could not defeat us. He did not have to. We defeated ourselves. He had only to prepare the way.
"Do you think you're a god?"
He is no more than me, so yes.
Warden shook his head. It was either delusion or fearlessness. His ears told him the latter.
"Does he have this?" His gesture to take in the world around him did not cause him to take his eyes off the stranger before him. Any opponent could kill if given the chance. Warden would give him no chance.
I know little of what he has. It matters not. Nothing does. You are my death come.
If asked, many could have said that about him and spoken the truth. Warden backed up against the slick wall, losing the vision, as the light at his feet grew.
What would you have of me?
The stranger's question brought Warden up short. What did he want other than to survive the ambush Helenia created using him as bait? He wanted…
To find Jalcina. The thought dragged him back into a world bathed in sun, a far cry from the dank underground he inhabited. His flesh baked and his vision covered in spots. He tried to blink them away and in the moment between the stranger made his move, darting across the circle at him. Warden, his back to the wall, felt what must have been a blade go into his side.
"I thought I was to kill you?"
I do not wish to die.
Face to face, blood dripping from his side, Warden saw fear in the man's eyes. Whatever he may have been, god or not, he feared death. If he cared, he might have pitied him. Instead, he grabbed the stranger by the arm and used it to lever him into the wall at his side with the crunch of his facial bones.
The blade, a slender thing like a long needle, stuck out of him. Warden grabbed it and while it still dripped his blood drove it into the stranger's spine with another, not unsatisfying, crunch.
His opponent flailed, his actions betraying both his fear and lack of training. Warden felt a touch of pity, but only a thimble full. His blood ran down his leg reminding him that the climb back to the surface would be a treat. Sweltering in the light's heat, he sought some sense of what he should do now. Killing this creature seemed the easiest thing.
Ruins of Fate Page 19
