by Jon Sprunk
Ral came to the end of the roof and stood at the edge of the abyss. There was nowhere to go. Cursing, he turned back, but something gave him pause. He set her down and drew his sword, pressing the tip against her back.
“Don't move a hair on that pretty head, Princess,” he breathed into her ear. “I wouldn't want you to fall to your death.”
Josey swayed in his grip. The tiles were ice cold under her feet. The rain saturated her sodden gown to penetrate her undergarments. At a nod from Ral, the sergeant took a position behind the door back into the palace and lifted a black-headed mace with wicked flanges. They're waiting for someone to come through the doorway.
Talons of fear constricted around her throat. Caim!
Josey tried to wriggle free, but Ral tightened his grip and jabbed her with the sword point. Blinking back raindrops, she watched the open door with growing trepidation.
Blood dripped from Caim's knives as he stole through the palace corridors. The shadows flew before him, a malevolent whirlwind of darkness and death snuffing out the candles along the walls with their passage. Caim saw just fine. The ache in his side was gone. He felt rejuvenated.
The Sacred Brothers in the throne room had fallen to him in a handful of heartbeats. Driven by anger, it took him almost as long to kick open the locked door. The screams of the nobles as they fled reminded him of another slaughter. His parents’ faces hovered before him. Their mouths moved, but no sounds emerged, only the pained expressions they'd worn the last time he saw them, a lifetime ago. An image of Josey imprinted over the carnage of his father's estate, her body sprawled on the cold palace tiles, Ral's sword protruding from her chest. Her eyes stared up at him in horror. He slashed the air and the figment vanished, but his fury redoubled, so hot he felt he might explode at the slightest touch.
He rounded a corner and skidded to a halt at the entrance to a spacious room. Rows of glass cases covered the floor beneath the stiff heads of a dozen hunting trophies. Five men awaited him.
Markus stood sideways, his sword leveled at Caim. “It's over. You're done interfering with our plans.”
The other Brothers flanked Caim with careful steps. One sported a crop of gray hairs sprinkled through his short beard and a row of stripes on his sleeve. He had probably seen all sorts of action from tavern brawls to brutal murders.
But he hasn't seen anything like me.
“Nice suit,” Caim said to Markus. “Did it come with a leash?”
Markus sneered through the mass of burns encrusting his face. “I'm grand master now, and soon I'll be a lord.”
Caim let his hands rest at his sides as the soldiers moved in. The veteran Brother lifted his hand as a prelude to attack.
Then, the darkness exploded.
Shouts resounded off the high walls as the Brothers were under assault by hundreds of tiny mouths. Caim watched without malice or mercy as the soldiers fell, one by one, and were consumed. All except for Markus, who stood in a shrunken circle of light, untouched. He slashed at the darkness around him as his men cried out for help, but he did not budge from the circle.
When the shadows finished their feast, they parted before Caim as if they knew his mind. Perhaps they did. He didn't know and he didn't care. The remains of the soldiers lay in huddled masses, their flesh gnawed away down to the bone.
The color fled from Markus's marred features as he stared at Caim. “What kind of devil are you?”
Caim slunk forward, his knives held low.
Markus turned and revealed a round shield strapped to his other arm. A little larger than a buckler, it looked like a relic from another century. Caim lunged with a double cut, low and high. The links of a mail shirt stopped his left-hand suete. The other was knocked aside by the edge of the targe. Caim spun away as Markus's sword whistled past his ear.
From behind the protection of his shield, Markus harried Caim around the room with an onslaught of vicious stabs. Caim stepped around a glass trophy case. Markus shattered it with a side-armed blow.
“You should have stayed away.” He centered his sword point on Caim's chest. “You should have let us take the girl. Now you're going to die.”
Caim launched a feint and counterthrust, but Markus batted it aside with the shield.
“You're already dead,” Caim said. “You're just not smart enough to realize it yet.”
Markus growled as he charged. Caim twisted away from the sword, but the shield's boss caught him in the chest and drove him back into the wall. His left arm was trapped between the shield and the room's partition. The broadsword fell, and he caught it with a desperate parry. Markus's stale breath blew in Caim's face as they strained against each other, chest to chest. The air was filled with their grunting and huffing.
Around the periphery of the room, the shadows quivered with agitation. Caim heard them hissing in the back of his head, eager to attack.
Back! he shouted at them. This is my fight.
But he couldn't push free. Markus was bigger, stronger, and he had the leverage. Moment by moment, he crushed the breath from Caim's lungs. Inch by inch, the sword's edge dipped closer to his head.
“Not so dangerous now, are you?” Markus smiled over the edge of his shield. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose. “Caim the Knife, the most feared man in Low Town, chopped up and gutted like a market hog.”
Caim's chest burned. His right arm was shaking, and he'd lost feeling in his left. The sword fell a few more inches. He could see his reflection in the surface of the blade.
“I wonder,” Markus said. “Will you scream like your lady-love did when I stuck her with my prick?”
Caim spat full in his face.
Markus drew back his sword as he blinked away the sputum. The motion made some space for Caim, enough to catch a breath of air.
Markus's eyes narrowed to bloodshot slits as he swung. Caim's knife flicked out. A heartbeat later, the sword clattered to the floor and Markus staggered backward, one hand pressed to the side of his neck. Ruby red arterial blood streamed down the front of his fine uniform. Disbelief and annoyance vied in his gaze as he slipped to the flagstones.
The blood roared in Caim's ears like a rushing flood. His hands shook from the exertion. He took a deep breath. The shadows had quieted at the edge of his vision. He could feel their impatience as he let out the breath. Flicking the blood from his blades, he resumed his hunt.
Caim jogged through a groined archway into another wing of the palace. As he passed a flight of stairs, distant sounds caught his ear: the slam of a door followed by a wailing roar. The storm.
Caim shook the excess gore from his knives as he turned onto the steps.
The shadows coursed before him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
“Our chariot awaits, Princess,” Ral crooned into Josey's ear.
She tried to bite him, but he kept his arm well away from her mouth. The sharp point of his sword pressed into her back.
A carriage awaited in the bailey courtyard below, surrounded by fluttering torches held aloft by rain-drenched soldiers. Ral shouted to catch their attention, but his words were lost in the storm. Josey almost laughed at his predicament. Besides the door there was no other way off the roof except for a fifty-foot drop to unforgiving stone.
“Your lover,” he said, “is dead by now, darling. A pity I didn't get the chance to cut his throat myself. Shall we go see the corpse?”
Before he could take a step, however, a shape appeared in the doorway. Josey didn't have to see the face to know who it was. A gasp broke from her lips, and relief, so long withheld, suffused her body and drove away the bitter chill as Caim stepped out onto the roof. He moved with his customary grace, but Josey could see his side was paining him by the way he walked. His long knives glittered in his hands, their blades stained scarlet. And he wore something new. The hilt of a sword jutted over his right shoulder.
While Josey took in the sight of her savior, a hulking figure moved from behind the door. She opened her mouth to warn Caim, but Ra
l mashed his forearm hard against her lips. The Brother swung. Josey's muscles went rigid as she witnessed what happened next, for she had seen it before in the cellar beneath her father's house.
The night came alive.
One moment the mace was sailing toward Caim's head, and then he was gone, wrapped in impenetrable shadows. Red stains blossomed on the Brother's uniform, at his side, his arm, his chest. Slack-jawed, the soldier collapsed and did not move again.
Josey sighed as Caim emerged from the darkness.
“Bloody Phebus.” Ral yanked Josey sideways. “Not another step! The princess and I are leaving. You'll stand aside if you don't want to see her insides splattered all over the yard.”
Caim stopped a dozen paces away. “I don't think so, Ral. Without Josey you're just an upstart with dreams of grandeur.”
“I've got important friends, people who want to see me on the throne. Princess or no princess, I will rule Othir.”
“Then prove it.” Caim took another step. “Kill her.”
Josey shuddered as she looked into his eyes. He wasn't bluffing.
“Stay back!” Ral shouted.
But Caim took yet another step, closing the distance between them.
Ral shifted his grip, and Josey felt herself slipping. Her bare feet scrabbled on the slick tiles. Caim leapt for her. He had dropped his knives. Pick them up! she cried inside her head even as she reached for him.
They slid down the slope, both of them straining to reach the other, but all she could think about was Ral, lurking above them, ready to pounce at any moment. A scream lodged in Josey's throat as the roof ended and empty space yawned beneath her feet.
Their fingers missed by inches.
Then, she was falling. Josey closed her eyes, the cry forgotten, and resigned herself to a swift death.
Something seized her arm and jerked her plummet to a halt. She looked up through the pouring rain, thinking Caim had somehow managed to catch her, but what she saw instead brought the scream rushing up her throat. Black as coal, so dark she couldn't make out its outline at first, it perched on a stone rainspout like a gargoyle. It looked like an overgrown wolfhound or a great jungle cat, with deep black holes for eyes and huge fangs like sooty icicles. Though the thing looked monstrous, it held her arm gingerly in its massive jaws.
Josey shook with body-jarring sobs as she hung from the mouth of the beast. Choking on tears of joy and fear, she contemplated the stones of the courtyard below. With firm resignation, she reached up around the creature's neck with her other arm. Rough bristles scraped against her wet skin.
With a rumbling growl, the creature shook its head and let go. Josey's piercing wail sliced through the storm as she fell, but her scream was cut short when her heels landed on firm footing. Shivering, she clutched at the wall. Her fingers found purchase on an entablature of ornamental scrollwork below the building's cornice.
Josey looked up. The beast was gone, vanished like a phantom, but the silhouette of a head peered over the edge of the roof above. She cried for help, but the wind snatched the words from her mouth. Lightning split the sky, followed by an epic crash of thunder that shook the palace walls, and the head disappeared.
Eyes squeezed shut, Josey tightened her grip and prayed.
Thunder rattled the roof tiles as Caim attacked.
He had recovered one of his suetes—a small miracle—but his thoughts were on Josey, dangling below. He didn't know what she had managed to grab onto; he couldn't see five strides in front of him through the storm's gloom. Whatever it was, he didn't think her grip would hold for long. He had to finish this fast. He feinted and cut low.
Ral beat the strikes aside and countered with a jab of his slender blade, but Caim was already moving. He slashed for the head, but the bastard jumped out of range. Something else was bothering him as well. When Josey had fallen over the side of the roof, he panicked. She was going to die and it was his fault. He deserved to die with her, but when he reached the edge, time had slowed to a crawl. In that instant, the shadows had scattered and he'd felt the presence again—the same presence he had felt in the Vine and again in Josey's cellar. The sensation had jangled his nerves like a splash of ice water. He'd stopped himself as his feet started over the side, but the feeling was gone.
Caim wiped his face with his free hand. The bizarre presence might have left, but his situation had deteriorated. The shadows were gone, back to wherever they came from, and his side ached worse than ever.
Ral adopted a casual fencing stance, sword arm halfway extended, feet apart. The gleaming point of his weapon wove small circles between them as he glanced to Caim's shoulder.
“Pick up a new toy, Caim? Watch out. You might pick up a little style and ruin your reputation.”
Knees bent, knife held low, Caim slunk toward his prey. “Worry about how you're going to get away.”
“Get away?” Ral laughed. “This is exactly where I want to be. You and me, the winner takes all.”
Caim couldn't believe the man's hubris. Ral was no slouch with the sword and as cold-blooded as any killer on the street, but even he couldn't hope to defeat Caim in a fair fight. “Do you really think you can—?”
A sudden motion cut off his words. Caim dropped flat to the rooftop as a steel sliver sailed from Ral's off-hand. The throwing blade spun over Caim's head to strike the wall behind with a metallic clink. Caim ground his teeth together, pissed at himself for forgetting Ral's penchant for dirty tricks. Ral didn't give him time to browbeat himself, but rushed in behind the throw.
Caim pushed off the wet tiles. He blocked the first thrust and spun away from the follow-up. In turning, however, his foot slipped on a loose tile. Pitched off balance, he parried a swift slash, but the impact knocked him on his back. He grunted as a tearing sensation ripped through his side. A trickle of warmth oozed down his ribs. He rolled back to his feet on the unsteady surface and scuttled sideways. All the while, Ral hounded him with cuts and jabs. Somehow during the exchange they had traded places. Now Ral backed him toward the precipice above the bailey. Caim kept low and made himself as small a target as possible. He reacted a split second too late to an attack and paid the price with a slice down his right biceps, not too deep, but it bled with a vengeance. Caim switched the knife to his left hand and responded with a riposte to create some space between them.
“How does it feel?” Ral advanced on light steps. His sword cut lazy figure eights in the air. “Knowing you're about to die at my hands? It has to hurt. I know you've always considered yourself the better man.”
Caim's breath came in shallow puffs as he gazed into the eyes of his enemy. Behind the arrogant twist of Ral's feature dwelt a frightened man, a man who had lived in Caim's shadow for so long he couldn't imagine a future without him. Caim tilted his head to let the cool rain patter on his face. He and Ral were two edges of the same blade, more alike than he had ever realized. With a momentous effort, Caim let the anger pour out of him, and he smiled.
Ral's lips twisted into an ugly frown.
When Ral glided forward behind a long thrust, Caim didn't retreat or dodge the attack. Instead, he leapt to meet it straight-on. Ral dug in his heels, but he couldn't curtail his lunge before Caim's blade caught the outthrust sword and twisted it away. A stiletto came up in Ral's other hand for a swift stop-thrust, but Caim grabbed the wrist. They grappled, chest to chest, both heaving for advantage. Caim drove with his hips, and the suete knife punched into Ral's navel like a blade returning to its sheath.
Ral convulsed against Caim's shoulder. His breath wheezed in Caim's ear. “You aren't…better…than…”
Caim pushed.
Ral sprawled on the tiles, one hand pressed to his abdomen, the other stretched over his head as if reaching for something that wasn't there. A livid welt pulsed on his open palm.
Caim left the man to gasp out his final breaths alone. He went over to the roof's edge. The storm had intensified. He couldn't see anything. He called out to Josey. If there was any response,
he couldn't hear it over the wind.
He was searching the face of the building for a way down when a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold skittered up his spine. The queticoux flashed through his mind, and the voracious shadows he had faced in Ral's suite.
Caim's fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife as he moved.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Caim toppled toward the roof's edge as a line of fire sliced across his lower back. His hands slipped on the wet tiles; his right leg was dead weight beneath him. With a frantic heave, he lurched sideways and saved himself.
A black-robed shape perched on the roof's peak. Amid flashes of lightning, the sorcerer's stoic features emerged, glistening like alabaster under his gaping cowl.
Caim took stock as he watched his enemy through the haze of rain and mist. He was hurt. How bad, he couldn't tell, but every movement sent rippling talons of agony clawing through his body. The twinge in his chest returned, pulsing under his heart, whispering its seductive call into his ears. Just surrender, it said, and the pain will be gone. Part of him wanted to give in. It would be easy to let the power take over.
With a deep breath, Caim pushed himself to his feet.
Sensation returned to his leg as he staggered away from the edge of the roof. His aches faded into the background when a small, almost innocuous knife appeared in the sorcerer's hand. Where did its matte black metal come from? The same metal as his father's sword. The answer was staring him in the face, so simple, and yet the implications reverberated to the core of his being.
“You killed the earl.” Caim climbed the roof's sloped pitch. “You killed my friend Mathias. And sixteen years ago, you killed my father. I want to know why.”
Levictus rose to his full height like an uncoiling serpent. His voice echoed in the darkness, as cold and forlorn as a tomb. “Before, we were an instrument; we went where bidden, unseen, unheard. To take those who were marked for death. Baron Du'Vartha was one of many.”
