“What…” She blinked, feeling as though she’d opened her eyes to find the world a wholly different place. “You’re not Wanderer, are you?”
A derisive laugh issued from the helm. “I am what he always aspired to, the true defender of the right.” And at last he lifted his visor, showing her a square, blocky face, as stern as a hanging judge, grey eyes pitiless as frost. “Know me, child. In your last moments, know me.”
And she didn’t, not quite. She’d seen the face before, or something close to it, but the memory hid itself away and she was about to awkwardly ask for a clue when Ralas called out, “I know you. I got a good enough look at your ugly stone face when we were locked up in Ilkand.”
“Justice is a beauty all to itself,” said the armoured man, and in that moment Celestaine cornered the errant memory.
“Lord Wall,” she got out. Wall, the Ilkand Temple’s greatest patron, the Kinslayer’s greatest foe—save that he hadn’t quite got to the battle when she and the other Slayers had sorted the enemy out for good. Wall, the warrior Guardian.
“I… don’t understand,” she said weakly. “Why did you want the Kinslayer’s crown?”
“I? I wanted nothing with it,” Wall told her flatly. “But I knew you mortals wouldn’t leave well alone. I knew that, within a generation, one of you would use it to make yourself a new Kinslayer. And I knew I could use it to draw those with such fatal ambitions, and put an end to them. I am bitterly disappointed in you, Celestaine of Fernreame, but I shall go about my duty nonetheless.”
“We wanted the crown to help people,” Celestaine said, feeling as though the world was falling apart around her.
“There is no compromise with evil,” Wall pronounced. “Evil is evil, and it must be destroyed wherever it is found. That you have come here in the company of the enemy’s creatures shows how far you have fallen. And you will never have the crown; not you, nor any other greedy mortals. I have destroyed it, and now I will destroy you.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“YOU…” CELESTAINE BLINKED. “…did what?”
“I have ensured that this tool of the enemy’s will never fall into hands that might use it,” Lord Wall told her, in a smug tone. “And now—”
“Yes, yes.” She waved away her impending demise irritatedly. “You destroyed the Kinslayer’s crown.”
Wall frowned, as if unsure why she was having difficulty with this. “A toy of the enemy’s, a thing of dark power—”
“Of power,” she corrected. “It wasn’t a thing of the enemy. It was gems stolen by the enemy. From us, from his victims. Gems that could heal, rebuild. Good things, things we need, now we’re all trying to work out what’s still standing and where the next harvest’s coming from. Things of hope. And you destroyed them.”
Wall struck the butt of his hammer on the ground for emphasis. “Once touched by the Kinslayer, everything is tainted. Every last trace of his corruption must be driven from this world, seared from the land until not even the memory of him remains. And that includes those who would covet—”
“You imbecile!” she bellowed at him.
“How dare—?”
“What, you’re going to rid the world of all memory of the Kinslayer? He brought a war to everyone. His armies marched on every damn city there is, from Ilkand to Athaln, from Tzarkona Gate to the Seven Quays. Thousands of people were killed. Thousands more lost their homes, and many will never get them back. Relics were stolen, landmarks razed, Guardians killed, the damn land itself got all twisted up—just look outside your cave, Your Lordship!—and even the gods, nobody even knows what happened to the gods. And we’re going to forget that, are we? We’re going to wake up one morning and—what?—just wonder where Aunt Irelli went and why the Kishanti Clock is just this pile of stones?”
“You are already corrupted by his touch, Celestaine of Fernreame,” Wall rumbled. “Perhaps it was when you faced him. Did he tempt you with power? Was that your fall from grace?”
“He didn’t get much of a chance, on account of how I was cutting his hand off at the time. Which you’d have known, if you’d been… oh. Oh. That’s it, is it?”
Wall was very still, watching her. It was the sudden lack of bombast that told her she was right.
“There’s a lot of it going around, isn’t there?” She risked another step towards him, because if things did go to crap then that hammer had far more reach than her sword. “I had Deffo—the Undefeated—sniffing about right after the Kinslayer’s corpse hit the ground, wanting to salvage his reputation. Probably he’s lurking in earshot even now. You two could get together, tell each other how simply marvellous you were during the war.”
“I will have nothing to do with that worm,” Wall sneered.
“Badger,” Celestaine corrected absently. “And I think you’d have lots to talk about. You both spent the war doing precisely nothing to help.”
This time he struck the head of his hammer on the ground in rage, sending her skittering back a few feet and bringing a curtain of dust down from above. “I gathered my followers. The Kinslayer would have fallen to us—”
“When?” Celestaine was done with listening patiently. “You got a bunch of people who told you how great you were, and you holed up in some castle so far north that the Yorughan’d have frozen their balls off trying to reach you. You thought we’d lose, the rest of us. You gave up on us and decided you’d start over somewhere cold and hope the Kinslayer wouldn’t wonder where you’d got to. Or perhaps—!” And she was right back in his incredulous face, throwing her hand up to silence his protests. “Perhaps I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you’d have come south with your band of fanatics, when you felt like it, when it was too late for everyone else. You’d have been the sole voice of righteousness, because everyone else would be dead or enslaved. Just like you’re trying to be the sole voice now.”
“I am—”
“You weren’t there!” she yelled at him. “Your damn Templars in Ilkand fought the Kinslayer three times and you weren’t there for them. Your fellow Guardians died, and you weren’t there.”
“I am Lord Wall!” he roared back. “I was first amongst my brothers to cast the Kinslayer in the earth. You cannot speak to me like that!”
“I can, because you didn’t finish the job,” she shot back. “And you didn’t help, and now you’ve decided you’re the great judge of the whole world because it makes you feel better about doing piss all during the war.”
Truth hurts, and she found confirmation of her words in his hammer, abruptly sweeping down towards her.
She barely got out of the way, sword leaping clear of its ravaged scabbard and grazing the hammer’s shaft as it thundered past her. She had a sense of the others starting to move and shouted, “No, he’s mine!” because she had the magic sword and they did not, and a blow from Lord Wall would kill even Nedlam stone dead.
“CROWN’S GONE, THEN,” Fisher said. “I’ll get the wagon.”
Doctor Catt watched Celestaine leap back from a ground-shaking stroke from Lord Wall. Her sword flashed out, but he was far faster than his size suggested, turning aside her blade with the haft of his hammer without giving it a chance to bite. Her fellows were spreading out, the big Yorughan warrior to one side, the Heart Taker to the other. Their Aethani had an arrow to the string, waiting for his moment. Probably Ralas was about to rush in too, though Catt didn’t see that going well for him.
“Come on, Catty,” Fisher said. “If we hurry, we can maybe find a tavern before nightfall.”
“Oh, don’t be so pessimistic, Fishy.”
“We can definitely find a tavern, then.”
“Fishy, dear friend, I took a good look at His Lordship here last night, through all the lenses we had. You know what I saw? Power.”
“Catt, he’s Lord Wall. Whatever else is true of him, power he’s got.”
“Not that sort of power. The Guardians vary, it’s true. Some are decidedly more vital than others, and Wall alway
s used to be a superlative exemplar of the breed. But I saw power, Fishy.” He winced as a hammer-blow came close enough to skin the tip of Celestaine’s nose. “I saw the sort of power one might just get if one combined a number of magical gems into some sort of decorative headgear using the Kinslayer’s particular flavour of dweomer. In short, I think our lordly demigod is dissembling. I think the crown’s sitting nicely in that chest.”
“You think Wall’s lying?”
“I think the crown exerts a powerful fascination on the lowly and the mighty alike. I think that when the moment came for the hammer to fall, he had second thoughts. And you know what that means, Fishy?”
“Catt…”
“It means we have a distraction, and we have shrouding magic, and we have a chest that will doubtless yield to a little persuasion.” He grinned fiercely at Doctor Fisher. “Out from under the very nose of a Guardian. The prospect rather makes one feel alive, does it not?”
CELESTAINE WAS DOING her best to drive Wall back, less to keep him off balance than to keep her friends from getting in the way. Between his hammer and her sword there wasn’t much safe ground anywhere near the fight.
She couldn’t match him for strength. When he swung, she had to give way. He obviously knew exactly what she wielded, though. She could move him just as he moved her, because he didn’t want to risk ending up holding a stump.
She couldn’t quite steer him, though. She had tried to back him into the cave, in the hope that he wouldn’t have room to swing, but instead he retreated to the left, which put Heno at his back and Nedlam at hers. She saw the Yorughan mage begin to work up his white fire.
Will that even work on him? Perhaps it would be extra-effective against Guardians. Perhaps, as it had been powerless against the Kinslayer, so it would be powerless against Heno’s old master’s kin.
Don’t want to find out just yet. She lunged straight down the middle, cutting at Wall’s visor and hacking a chip from it as he fell back slightly too slowly. For a moment she was angling her blade at his neck, between helm and pauldron, but he had her measure and thrust the hammer at her—not how the weapon was meant to be used, but the solid head slammed into her abdomen, putting another dent in her breastplate and knocking her over.
That was the signal, as far as everyone else was concerned, for a free-for-all.
Wall had his hammer up to well and truly smite her, and Celestaine was rolling aside, trying to bring her sword up between his legs. Then an arrow spanged from the edge of his eyeslit, enough to send him stumbling and put him off his attack. It was followed, as though shot from the very same bow, by Nedlam.
The big Yorughan came in swinging, her ironbound club crashing into Wall’s shoulder and buckling the armour, sending him staggering. Ned tried to stave in his helm with the follow-through, but Wall ducked into the swing, arm up to hook about the club, and deflect it. His mailed elbow smashed Nedlam in the face, and he wrapped a hand about her jaw and just shoved her away. Ned wasn’t used to running into someone stronger than she was and ended up teetering off-balance as he wound up his hammer again. Then Heno’s white fire wreathed him and, though it didn’t seem to actually hurt, it infuriated Wall beyond all reason. He rounded on the Heart Taker, and Celestaine saw him practically frothing with rage through the slots of his visor. If there was an Enemy, capital E, then it was the Kinslayer, but in the Kinslayer’s absence, the Heart Takers had always been the symbols of his power, and Heno even still wore the uniform.
Oh, death, went through Celestaine’s mind, because Heno had clearly got Wall’s attention.
Wall had been deft on his feet, but had kept his movements small, letting himself go inches aside from her strokes and conserving his strength, Now he moved, kicking away from her and whirling his hammer at Heno at full extension. The Heart Taker threw himself on his back on the ground, the only way to get out with his head still on his shoulders, and Wall already had his hammer up, about to turn him into a stain on the rock.
Another arrow landed, this time over the rim of Wall’s breastplate and into his armpit. There was fine mail there, though, and Celestaine saw the shaft just sag in the armour without penetrating. She was scrabbling to her feet, tripping forwards, sword first, hoping to close the distance faster than the hammer could come down.
She heard Ralas swear as inventively as any bard could as he just leapt in the way, waving his arms like a madman and spitting out obscenities right into Wall’s visored face. The hammer came down, but Heno had lunged aside in that moment’s hesitation, and Ralas was well within its arc. The haft slammed into his shoulder but then he was hanging onto it like an arthritic monkey, so that when Wall swung the weapon back up, Ralas went with it, kicking at the Guardian’s head.
Celestaine knew her moment when she saw it. She caught her balance and turned her stumble into a lunge, hacking into Wall’s armour. She’d been aiming at the tassets that fell in sections about his hips, because she’d call it a win if she could get his metal trousers to end up around his ankles. She rushed the blow, though, slicing into the thick metal of the breastplate itself, peeling the metal back and pulling the blade out with a little blood along its edge.
THERE HAD BEEN a thriving magical collector’s trade before the war, of course, and Doctor Catt had been an enthusiastic amateur. The Kinslayer had changed everything, though. Catt wasn’t a Silvermort, to give thanks to the enemy for the opportunities he had brought, but it was true that the selection of powerful desiderata up for grabs had multiplied impressively after the Kinslayer began his campaign. Plenty of relics were displaced from age-old hiding places, either spoils of war or carried out ahead of the tide by their secret guardians. Plenty more were created by the Kinslayer himself—who, for all his many faults, had a ceaselessly inventive nature. Others, like the crown, were a combination of the two, and they were frequently the most potent.
Most collectors, faced with the chaos of war and its attendant risks, had quietly closed up their collections and gotten out of the trade for the duration. Doctor Catt was not among them. In the silver years of his life, with the world on fire around him, he had discovered a hitherto unsuspected love of taking risks.
Celestaine would never know, which he felt was a shame. She had fought battles and killed the actual Kinslayer, and no doubt thought of him as a meddling tradesman with too much money and too many toys. He hadn’t been idle during the war, though; he had been in and out of occupied Cinquetann hunting for choice specimens, and some he had kept, but some he had put into the hands of the resistance. He had stood in the private chambers of enemy commanders and abstracted their battle plans or forged their signatures, he had walked unseen through the night-time camps of Yorughan whose morning battle plans would have to be redrawn without their enchanted battle standards or horns of wall-breaking. And he had profited mightily from it, in money and in acquisitions for his collection, but then he didn’t know a single spy who hadn’t been lining his own pockets while helping the cause of just.
And now he was creeping past a truly spectacular melee between the woman who slew the Kinslayer and the greatest of the Guardians, the gods’ agents in the mortal world. Whoever won, someone was going to be down a crown by the end of the day.
There, within the archway, was the chest that Wall had been sitting on all night, waiting for this nonsensical challenge. For what it was worth, Catt agreed wholeheartedly with Celestaine about the Guardian’s motives. Pure sour grapes at not being in for the kill; and whose fault was that exactly? Nobody but Wall’s own self.
The fight took a sudden turn his way. Catt froze, one hand to his protective amulet, watching the Yorughan Heart Taker almost get turned into a decorative smear. Then everyone was piling on Wall, and Catt re-evaluated his greatest risk right then as ‘being struck by a flying bard’ as Ralas clung on gamely to the great maul.
Come on, old man, get your legs moving. Once he was sure the fight wasn’t about to roll over him, Catt moved on, cutting a curved path over the rocky terrain,
to avoid all the unpleasantness going on below. He heard Wall bellow in pain and had time to glance back and send an approving thought Celestaine’s way. She really is rather good at this. If she survives, I think she and I are likely to come to blows. He would need to stack the deck heavily in his own favour to come out of that one ahead, but he was good at that.
And here he was, and there was the chest. He had his headband of lenses on, that he used for reading fine print as much as anything magical, but he flipped down two of the more unusual and examined the metal-bound container. Yes, hard to tell against the radiance of the power within, but definitely something about the lock itself. A rasher man might have just set to with lockpicks, but he had a piece of rune-etched chalk for just this occasion and marked the relevant warding sigils about the lockplate to disarm whatever nastiness had been lurking in wait for a less perceptive thief. After that it was out with the picks: while there were magics that could trip locks, they were clumsy and tended to ruin the mechanisms one time out of three, and Catt liked keeping all his skills properly honed.
It wasn’t a good lock. It looked nice, and it was big and clunky. Probably it was what Lord Wall looked for in a lock, but Catt was able to throw the tumblers one after another with the aid of a spell that let him look inside at all the pieces. He understood that some people broke into other people’s houses and containers without magical aid, which seemed like trying to win a fight with your laces tied together. Even so, it’s taken me rather longer than I’d like: unlike this lock, I am rather rusty. I should just buy a load of locks and keep my hand in.
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