The child was drawn to him; this much he could accomplish with so little power it was natural: there was something in the lor bidden that was attractive to children who had been raised without fear. In time, there would be none of those—but he took advantage of it now because it was required.
He led the child away from its parents. He could not waste the death on people of no consequence, and he knew that if they heard the voice, they must begin their search in earnest, might even reach him before his intended victim did. It must be Jewel ATerafin who responded.
It was not so difficult a task as that. She was, after all, looking for the kin, and he had them here, at his command. Kiriel was on the trail of one who had been ordered to make himself obvious to her; she would not return in time—and she was the only true danger, if not the only threat.
He found an alley, long and narrow, and set about it a delicate seeming; gave it an aura of shadow, of subtle menace that would repel without causing alarm. Any who crossed these barriers he would kill outright, swiftly.
He sealed the alley with his back.
The child turned, sensing his glamour, his darkness. He saw her eyes widen, saw her smile uncertainly. The smile he offered gave her no comfort at all.
Come, he thought, as he began his binding spells, come and find me, Jewel.
With one slow cut, he began to summon his intended victim.
He wasn't prepared for her when she came.
She saw it, of course; saw the dark glimmering that went up about the alley's mouth. It was a blackness tinged and ringed with violet. The color of illusion; Meralonne had taught her that. But he had not taught her to see the shadows that billowed in violet confines because the shadows weren't his to control.
Shadow. Oh, she remembered the deaths. The earth had been the barrier between them, between the dying and the men and women who desperately needed to help, to fulfill their responsibility— and it had been unbreachable. She could taste it, suddenly, the awful dryness in mouth and throat, the slightly salty tang of blood.
She'd bitten her lip.
There were people in the street, and they were safe, she knew they were safe. They let her pass, they let her pass each and every one, and as she approached the mouth of the alley itself, the crowd thinned. She blessed Kalliaris.
Forgot about Cormaris.
Forgot about Cormaris until she'd crossed the line that led into the alley itself. He hadn't expected her, the bastard, hadn't expected that she would come so soon. She knew it because his back was to the alley's mouth and when she drove the dagger into the middle of his spine, he didn't—not quite—have enough time to leap out of the way, over the head of his victim, a girl not much older than ten if Jewel was any judge.
She'd cut, struck: not home, but it was enough.
Or it should have been.
She heard his cry; it was a roar that was suddenly cut away, as if by a sculptor separating stone from stone, essential nature from essential nature, to reveal something far worse: silence, deliberate control.
She knew the dagger she wielded.
She had seen it destroy demons before.
Involuntarily, her gaze went to its blade.
"Oh, yes," this creature said. "It is… well crafted, little human. You were… closer than I expected."
Jewel caught the girl by the shoulders; she was bleeding, but the cut wasn't deep; it was a long one that had pierced cloth and skin in a single stroke. She'd recover. If she got out of here. Jewel intended that.
She put the girl behind her. "Run," she said.
"She cannot," the creature replied, struggling to speak clearly. "The way is barred. Jewel. The only key is your death."
They were angry. They were all angry until they reached the alley itself. Avandar was unarmored; he was faster than Devon, and significantly more proprietary. He reached the alley before the last of Jewel ATerafin was swallowed by it. And it was as if she were physically swallowed; she moved through the alley's shadows and they solidified at her back, blocking all light, all sight of her but the vision that memory provided.
What had been the entrance into a narrow throughway was now a wall, black as Northern coal.
Because he was Avandar, he survived.
Devon could stop on a pin's head. As blue light crackled and flared, he instinctively threw up both of his arms, crossing them in a clatter of metal against metal.
Singed flesh and cursing brought them down.
Avandar was bleeding, and it occurred to Devon, as the domicis staggered and dropped to one knee before bringing his hand to his chest and the ragged edge of cloth that defined its center, that he had never seen the domicis injured before.
At his back, Angel and Carver skidded to a halt; Jester was caught up by the crowd, somewhere at Kiriel's heels.
"Avandar?" Carver bent to speak. "Get Meralonne, " the domicis snarled. Carver turned and ran.
She had never been this close to dying.
She knew it, and knew it, the instinctive for once in perfect harmony with the intellectual. But she did not see the blackness or the death itself, and she took what comfort she could from that. She adjusted her grip on the dagger that was her only effective weapon—her only weapon, really—and bent into her knees, readying her weight for a leap or a dodge.
But he did not approach her.
Stall, she thought. Stall him for a time.
As if he were just another power-mad human. As if he were Haerrad, or Marrick, or Rymark, or Elonne. A person of power. A politician who was willing to do whatever it was that was necessary to get what he desired. As if.
"Don't you have anything better to do?"
It wasn't the question she'd been about to ask. She'd thought to utter a threat of some sort, feeble or laughable though it was. But there; she'd asked.
His eyes widened, slightly rounding at dark corners.
"If you wield that dagger," he replied, "you know what I am. Know that, and you have the answer to your question."
"No, I don't."
"No?"
"You aren't frothing at the mouth like a sharp-toothed madman."
His brows, which were dark and thin, rose, and then he smiled. It was a dark smile, but it was edged with genuine amusement. "You have no idea, Jewel ATerafin, how much I wish I could call my brethren to witness this. But I am… diminished. You are an interesting human, a foolish one to be so fearless; you are not a power."
"I'm not a mage, no. But—"
He moved then.
She was moving before the sentence was complete, rolling on the dirt and minimal garbage, cushioning the force of the fall.
At her back, she heard the scream of the young girl. The alley took it and made it a resonating accusation. She had forgotten. The reason she'd come had been left behind by reflex, by her own desire to survive.
She froze a moment as that realization hit her; moved again as the creature did. slicing cleanly through clothing and a thin layer of flesh. It hurt.
But not as much as the whimpering did, because it wasn't hers. She wheeled, fighting instinctive movement because instinct told her to leap away. The girl was alive, but she was clutching the side of her face; her arm was slick with new blood.
He was there, and his face was devoid of the triumph she expected to see; she let instinct take her body—if she survived, she'd pay—and bled again for the momentary hesitation. But worse than that: the dagger skittered out of her slashed wrist.
It only works once. Devon had said it. After that, it had to be cleansed, be reconsecrated. Something.
She leaped.
Carver started down the street, started out at a run. His mouth was dry. Jay was all right. She had to be all right. She'd never walked into a trap before.
He wanted to believe it, but he'd seen Avandar's face. Heard his voice. Carver wasn't a grand patrician; he was a part of Terafin, but he hadn't been born and bred to it. He knew fear, he'd felt it so often; he knew gut-deep visceral fear when he heard it.
Avandar's voice held about as much fear as a man's voice could. And he'd never heard Avandar afraid.
Get Meralonne.
No. Carver stopped dead. Jay wasn't the only one who operated on instinct.
Stay alive, he thought, as he suddenly twisted round, knocking two soon-to-be-angry women over. Their curses were a comfort.
Who did you turn to, after all? Who did you turn to when one of your own had been caught by the magisterians, or worse, angry merchants and their guards? You didn't run to authorities; they'd be piss useless.
You gathered your own.
"Jester!" And then, louder, as if his life depended on it, "KIRIEL!"
Why doesn't he just finish it?
She was bleeding from a dozen small cuts; the girl was bleeding from fewer. But while the girl was frozen with fear, as easy a victim as one could ask for. Jewel was in motion, constantly in motion. And it cost her. She couldn't draw breath unless it were noisy, and it hurt now.
"Why," she said, bracing herself against the wall, "don't you just finish it?"
"My apologies," was his soft reply. "I had no intention of prolonging either your misery or my stay."
She would have snorted, but she heard truth in the words.
"The injury you inflicted is the cause of your less convenient death. You have cost me much here. Jewel ATerafin; more, in fact, than any of my brethren, who have both power and time to plan, have done in millennia. To kill you quickly, it seems, requires a magic that I can no longer afford to expend.
"Let me compliment you on your reflexes," he continued, as he moved slowly to close the distance she'd put between them. "I had thought to kill you quickly regardless." A smile turned his lips up. "If you wish an end, perhaps you would oblige me?"
"I'd love to, but you know how it is."
"Sadly, yes." He reached back then, casually; the child screamed.
Jewel had no weapon, or she would have attacked then. Probably would have died, but she couldn't do it; she couldn't ignore him. He had two weapons: the child and the fact that he did not tire.
And gods, she was tiring.
Devon ATerafin watched Avandar's progress. He was not mage-born, not mage-trained, and his sensitivity to magic was more instinctive than real, a thing of imagination that was strong enough, on rare occasion, to cross the boundary of reality.
This was not one of those occasions. He could see, clearly, that Avandar was struggling with something that was almost physical in nature—but with what, and how, he kept to himself, as he kept most things. His fear was strong, but focused, and this, as his magic, he kept to himself.
In at least that much, they were alike.
He waited as patiently as he could. He could feel the sun against damp skin, but at a distance; he was chilled with the need for action. Something caught the periphery of his vision, and he glanced up.
Haloed by sun's brightness, he could see a slender figure whose hair traced an upward spike: Angel had reached the building's narrow height. He lifted an arm, hand palm out, fingers splayed wide. The shout behind Devon's pursed lips died into the hiss and shout of a crowd of people all desperate to make good during the Challenge season.
Angel, not ATerafin, bunched up, shoulders blades deforming his back the way a cat's might have had he been feline, and chose that moment to disappear.
He was through.
The building was not so tall, and the ground not so far, that he paused for more than a moment to think about what he was doing, or how. He looked down from the heights, he saw Jay, and he saw someone who was stalking her; that was enough. He pulled his dagger, positioned himself as silently as possible, and jumped.
It was that simple.
What was not simple: To throw himself clear of the hand that flashed out to meet him, mid-fall; to hold back the single cry of surprise as something that looked like fingers came this close to bisecting his chest, and to roll away—all without losing that dagger.
Jay wasn't a killer; he'd known that. And he knew—and learned again, in case he'd forgotten it—that she wasn't an easy target. But she could see a death coming when it was meant for her; he couldn't.
The wound, he knew, was deep; it was not fatal. He thought it wasn't fatal. He didn't have time to think all that much more.
"ANGEL, left!"
He rolled with the voice. That much was instinct. Came up on his feet two inches away from the wall that had almost killed Avandar. The dagger, he held in slick hands, his own, where he'd brushed his chest.
There was another person in the alley; he'd been aware of her, but only a bit; it was Jay who'd mattered. She was young, though, by the sound of her voice; she was whimpering.
Take it easy, kid, he thought. Jay'll think of something.
The alley was awfully dark, and getting darker as he watched. Magic? Pain.
Damn.
She did not come through the crowds, although it was through the crowds that he was frantically, clumsily, calling. She came, instead, above them, walking two feet over upturned, suddenly silent, faces. He froze a moment when he saw her. Thought, stupidly, Jay's going to kill us. If Meralonne didn't beat her to it.
"Carver." She came at once to where he'd stopped the minute he caught sight of her, sprinting as if she already knew what he'd called her for. There she stopped. Her sword, he saw, was sheathed, and he was grateful for it; if she drew it, he thought—was sure— that there'd be sudden panic and people'd be hurt in the crush.
She didn't bother to descend to his level, and that meant that everyone within easy sight—too many damned people for his liking—was suddenly staring at him.
"It's Jay," he told her. He thought he'd have time to explain it, but he didn't have to.
"Where?"
"Over by the old mill building—"
She cursed. "That means nothing to me. Give me your hand. Hurry."
He did as she ordered before he'd time to think about it; put his hand into hers. She didn't wear mail gloves, or any gloves at all; he was wearing half-leathers for grip's sake—but he was the one who felt completely naked as his hand met hers. He would've pulled back, but her hand closed like a trap, and she hauled him to his feet, beside her.
Thank Kalliaris, he thought, we're not wearing skirts.
It was a giddy thought. He took a hesitant step; followed it by another, firmer one. She gave him that much play and no more, and she didn't let go of his hand; he had a feeling that when she did his next step would be a long one, straight down.
For some reason that he couldn't quite explain, he thought of Duster, and his face broke into a grim smile. "This way."
This was not the way she had run, the first time.
She had no one with her, and no one to carry warning to her before it was too late. What she had, that close to the Lord who had birthed her, was a heightened instinct, an awareness of things that brought pain.
She had not called upon power there. In the stone halls of her father, seamless from depths to height, she had not even run; she had heard the screaming with a curiosity and the intense pleasure that was her birthright. Indeed, she heard it heartbeats before the Kialli in attendance raised their faces, sniffing at the winds as if they were charnel, as if. indeed, they were in the confinement of their home of millennia.
Why, why had she not run then?
Pride.
Survival. Haste—the obvious need for haste—was a sign of weakness, and she had been trained too well to show it to those who might consider that weakness a sign of their advantage.
In the Hells, after all, all advantage was pressed and tested. And she had grown up in the shadow of her human heritage, the weakness of a form that demanded sleep and food and breath. She had envied the Kialli then. She envied them now.
But in this city, in Averalaan Aramarelas, it didn't matter who thought her weak. She left off her chosen pursuit when the sound of Carver's voice shattered a concentration that not even the breath of her great beast, Falloran, could, fiery and dangerous though i
t was.
She was surprised that she recognized him; his voice was not like anything she had ever heard; his fear rode it, but it was a rare fear; there was something vaguely unsatisfying about it.
"What?" Jester had said. "Kiriel, what is it?" He was tense, his dagger—a weapon that she never wished to see employed— wavering dangerously in his hand.
"I think—I think it's Carver."
"I don't hear anything."
"He's called you. And—and me."
"He's—" Jester's brow puckered, the soft folds of his skin forming deep, lines.
"What is it?"
"What does he sound like?"
"Afraid."
"Is he running from something?"
She'd paused. "No." No.
"Kalliaris' frown. It's Jay. Or Angel. It's one of us." He'd turned then, and she felt a surge of fear in him, as unlike the fear he'd carried as he'd hunted by her side as day is to night. There must, she thought, be another word for an emotion that is so different in texture from fear for one's safety, and yet just as visceral, just as paralyzing.
And she knew that the fear he felt was the fear that Carver felt. Knew it because it suddenly invaded her, as if it had a life of its own, as if it were a human disease, and she only mortal, and already laid low. Jay.
She listened; heard Carver's shout grow slowly. Jester had already started to move. The crowd was a maze, and it closed round his back; she couldn't follow where he led because the path disappeared when the arms and shoulders of strange humans touched.
She tried to follow, she almost drew her sword—tout hacking her way through the crowd, as she suddenly desperately desired to do—would not get her to Carver as fast as she felt, suddenly, she needed. So she did what she did not do, in this strange place, with its laws and its ordinances and its meekly accepted penalties: She called her magic, draped herself in its shadow, and took to the air, made of it a solid plateau, made it serve the weight of her feet.
She passed Jester with a grim smile. Even in this, in a mutual goal, she felt pleasure at being first, at being—yes—-more powerful. And then she forgot it: she saw Carver, saw his face.
She ran, because she had not run this way in the Shining Palace and she remembered too clearly what it had cost her to walk.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 28
