Ward Against Destruction

by Melanie Card

  She reached for him, but he squared his shoulders and rushed to the stairwell before she could pull him there. She stopped him a few steps down and hugged the wall, waiting.

  The pirate’s footsteps drew closer.

  Celia tightened her grip on the dagger. She needed to cut him so Ward could draw the sangsal out through his blood. Except she didn’t know how difficult that would be for Ward.

  The footsteps slowed, and the tension swept from her body. A thrill mixed with a strange calm thrummed through her as it always did seconds before a fight. She’d thought the two were incongruous, but now she knew they weren’t. Excitement and focus.

  Just like Ward was now death and life.

  A chill flooded the air, and ice snapped over the floor in a flash-freeze. The pirate’s hand, swarming with black veins, came into sight, slowly, as if time had somehow turned thick and frozen. Her heart pounded.

  His shoulder cleared the wall. She seized his wrist and sliced at his armpit. With a yelp, he lurched back. A smoke whip snapped from his hands, twisted around her arms, and tossed her to the side. She slammed into the edge of the stairwell’s entranceway, and pain shot over her shoulder and side.

  She caught her balance as Ward barreled up the stairs. He rammed his shoulder into the pirate’s chest, and he grunted and twisted. Ward staggered past him, off balance. The pirate’s smoke sliced across Ward’s back. Blood welled over his shirt but didn’t pour from the cut. Vesperitti healing had its advantages.

  “Hey!” someone said behind her. A pirate—this one not infected with sangsal—rushed at her with his sword drawn.

  Shit.

  The new pirate—a younger man with a patchy beard—lunged at Celia. She sidestepped his attack and sliced at his ribs, but he snapped his blade down, awkwardly blocking her strike. At the edge of her vision, the sangsal pirate seized Ward and shoved him hard against the wall.

  Her pirate swung at her. She ducked under, slammed her palm against his shoulder, knocking him around, and drove her dagger through his back into his heart. He screamed, and she clamped her hand over his mouth, wrenching his head around and snapping his neck.

  The sangsal pirate rammed his elbow into Ward’s head. She lunged at them, her dagger aimed between his ribs to hit his heart. He twisted out of the way but slipped on blood and ice slicking the floor and toppled toward the stairs, taking Ward with him.

  Ward heaved, pulling himself above the pirate, and rode him down the stairs to the bottom.

  Celia rushed after them. The pirate groaned and snapped a fog whip around Ward’s neck. He gurgled, his eyes growing wide and his skin turning blue. Celia jumped down the last four steps and slammed her dagger into the pirate’s heart.

  The fog vanished from Ward’s neck. The pirate opened his mouth to scream, and Celia clamped her hands over it, muting his cry. Frosted breath stung her fingers. Ward yanked the dagger free, and blood and black smoke gushed from the wound.

  His shoulders heaved—the only sign that what he needed to do sickened him—and he pressed his mouth over the wound. The black veins in the pirate’s face and neck pulsed fast and desperate, and smoke swirled around Ward’s head. He pulled a few inches away from the wound to draw breath. Blood smeared his chin, one cheek, and his slightly parted lips. As he inhaled, a stream of blackness, thicker than mere smoke, swept into his mouth. He fought to swallow, the effort painful to watch.

  He sucked in more sangsal, the stream thicker than before. The pirate shuddered, and the black veins burst into frenzied writhing. Ward drew in another gulp, and the writhing slowed, then stuttered.

  The pirate gasped and went limp. Dead. Ward sagged to the side, his palms pressed to the floor, his back heaving. A part of Celia wanted to command him to throw it up, but that wasn’t the plan.

  “Deep breaths,” she said.

  “Easier said than done.” He drew in a ragged breath, his body trembling.

  Thick, black veins oozed under his skin, over the back of his hands and up his forearms. One slid up his neck and across his cheek.

  He shuddered, pressed his forehead to the floor, and clenched his hands. Frozen breath misted around his face, and a circle of ice formed around his fingers.

  She rubbed his back. “Just breathe.”

  He glanced at her, his eyes hard and jaw clenched. A vicious feralness radiated from him, and a black vein throbbed in his temple. His gaze slid to her throat as if he could see her pulse and wanted it.

  She jerked back. “Keep it together.”

  He groaned. The muscles in his back and legs bunched as if he was going to attack. “Make it a command,” he gasped.

  “Keep. It. Together.” She focused all her will into the words. If they were going to succeed, he had to stay human. He couldn’t succumb to his vesperitti nature or the sangsal.

  The tension in his body eased a bit. “I don’t know how long your command will compel me.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to override everything?”

  “The sangsal is powerful.” His eyes fluttered shut, and he tensed. “Really powerful. We need to find the other infected pirates and finish this. Fast.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ward shuddered as the sangsal oozed through him. It churned in his gut and seeped, frozen, through his essence and tainted everything in dark red. The urge to rip into Celia, to feel her blood slick on his hands and taste the tang on his tongue, clawed at him, stronger than the vesperitti hunger from before. Her command had burned through the soul chain and around his heart, but a part of him didn’t care, even if it had been an order. She might be his master, but she was nothing compared to the overwhelming desires of the sangsal.

  He straightened, his stomach still heaving. His muscles tensed, and his hands twitched with the need for violence. Goddess, he wasn’t going to be able to hold it together.

  “All right.” Celia took the pirate’s belt and put it, along with his sword and dagger, around her waist. “Where do you think we should start looking for Thanos and the other pirate?”

  Ward couldn’t decide if he should laugh or cry. “There’s always something we haven’t thought about with our plans.”

  Celia shrugged. “We haven’t had a lot of time to do deep planning. Next time, I promise, we’ll spend at least a week doing surveillance and research.”

  “Promises, promises.” But that still didn’t address the problem. The sangsal billowed with just a breath of the blizzard it promised, and he gritted his teeth. Fast might not be an option. They couldn’t just go barging around the temple. Even if there were only two other sangsal-infected pirates, the dozens of other pirates were still an issue.

  “I think we’re going to have to take someone alive and find out where the other men are.” Celia headed up the stairs.

  “We haven’t had much luck with alive.” The sangsal in Ward didn’t want anyone to be alive. He wanted to bathe in blood.

  Celia stopped at the top step, her gaze locked on the body of the first dead pirate. “How about not alive, but awake. Do you think you can make this one talk?”

  “You slit his throat.”

  A smile pulled at Celia’s lips. “Right. No vocal cords. We’ve been through this before.”

  “You remember.” The first time she’d asked him to wake someone she’d killed had been in that disgusting inn in the worst part of Brawenal City. She’d slit that man’s throat as if killing had been second nature. And now Ward knew the truth—it had been second nature.

  “What about—?” She pointed back down the stairs to the sangsal-infected pirate.

  “I’m not sure if the sangsal leaves any soul left to call back from across the veil.”

  “So that leaves this one.” Celia knelt by the pirate she’d stabbed in the back. “Unless a broken neck is also a problem.”

  “Not as much as a slit throat.” Ward knelt beside the dead man. Blood pooled on the floor around his body. Bile burned the back of Ward’s throat. He’d taken that final step and consumed blood. />
  He drew in a quick breath, closed his eyes, and concentrated on casting a wake. Magic swarmed through his mind’s eye, brilliant and blinding. There was so much in and around him, from the blood he’d consumed that made him fully vesperitti, to the magic sparkling in the blood from the pirate. He could take it all, use it. There’d never been a necromancer turned vesperitti with the powerful infection of sangsal before. He could rule the Union, never be laughed at or branded again.

  The thought swept into a black blizzard, howling and freezing. It ate at his soul, tearing into him and snapping off chunks. The sangsal wanted him to give in, let it take over. It would be easier than fighting it.

  No. He had to hold it together. For Celia. For the fate of the Union.

  To do that, he needed to wake this pirate. He didn’t need all this magic around him. All he really needed was a thread.

  Celia shifted beside him, the sound of her boot against the floor too loud. It shattered his already weak concentration on keeping his senses dulled.

  He pushed back at all the sensations crowding him, forcing the sangsal blizzard into slithering gusts under his skin. It crawled like icy bugs, making him itch and burn with frostbite. It didn’t want him to open the veil. It wanted him to start killing people.

  Open the veil. He narrowed his attention to that thought. It didn’t take much magic. He’d been able to do it for most of his life, even when he couldn’t see or sense magic.

  But the glow, the power, the craving—

  He shut that all off, imagining a thick, black blanket enveloping everything. Take a bit of magic from the blood seeped into the pirate’s shirt—don’t consume it—create a sliver in the veil, and call the man’s soul back. Just for a little bit. Just to answer a few questions.

  Someone gasped, and the imaginary blanket shattered. His eyes flew open, and the pirate screamed.

  Celia clamped at hand over his mouth. “Stop screaming.”

  The man kept screaming against her hand, his eyes wide. Most times a newly woken person thought they’d just gone to sleep, but from the panic in his expression he knew she’d already killed him.

  Celia pursed her lips. She’d come to the same conclusion. “Perhaps a little vesperitti encouragement.”

  Her intention—to use his enthrallment ability—shot through the soul chain. He leaned forward, capturing the man’s gaze and concentrating his will on him. “Calm down.”

  The pirate stopped screaming, but panic still filled his expression. Pressure swelled in Ward’s head. The pirate was fighting the compulsion. He panted, sharp, shallow gasps against Celia’s hand.

  “Just calm down.” Ward focused on being calm, slow, and steady. Nothing to fear.

  The pressure eased a fraction, and the pirate’s breathing slowed.

  “Good.” Celia slid her hand from his mouth. “Where are Thanos and the other sangsal-infected pirate?”

  The pirate blinked, and confusion clouded his face. “The what?”

  “The other pirate like Thanos.” Ward pushed at the pressure in his head, focusing all of his enthrallment on the man.

  “The other chosen,” the pirate said.

  Celia’s aura rippled again. “Yes. Are they in the camp on the island’s bank?”

  “No, they get a special room here in the temple.”

  “Where?” Celia asked.

  “Top floor at the back, facing the altar.”

  “Are they there now?” she asked.

  The pirate shrugged. His neck crunched, and his breath shot into panicked gasps. The pressure in Ward’s head exploded, followed by a blast of ice. He clenched his jaw, fighting to steady his concentration.

  “Are they there now?” Celia pressed.

  “Probably,” the pirate said. His eyes widened, and his terror snapped over Ward. “I’m dead. I’m—” He screamed, and Celia clamped her hand over his mouth.

  Ward severed the magic maintaining his wake, and the pirate’s eyes rolled back and he went limp. “Looks like probably will have to be good enough.”

  “It’s better than what we had before.” Celia glanced into the antechamber.

  Torches flickered, bright with light and magic, on the far side of the opening, but the two pirates who usually stood outside the front entrance were missing. Outside, the sun had long set and the sky was dark with clouds, only a hint of the moon’s sparkling magic filled the air.

  All clear. Celia headed to the stairs leading up.

  Ward forced himself to follow but couldn’t help looking again for the men usually at the door. They were sacrifices, blood, death—

  Ward. Compulsion to head up the stairs burst through the soul chain, and he realized he’d stopped on the third step.

  He rushed the rest of the way up to the dimly lit, quiet second floor. No glimmer of auras in sight and no sounds of anyone nearby. So far they were good.

  They continued up the stairs to the third floor and followed a narrow, dark hall to the back of the temple. Celia inched from entranceway to entranceway. Ward kept a step behind. If she needed to attack fast, he didn’t want to get in the way. The ice from the sangsal chilled him, growing stronger, as if somehow having a window that overlooked the Gate made it more powerful. His breath misted around his head, and he left a trail of icy footprints on the floor behind him.

  A large shadow stepped into an entranceway at the end of the hall, and all light from any of the magic vanished into it. “Penn? Done with the prisoners so soon?”

  Celia’s aura rippled.

  “You’re not Penn,” the pirate said.

  She rushed the twenty feet to him, drew her sword, and lunged. He stepped back with a sharp inhalation, as if he hadn’t expected her attack—which probably was the case. Before meeting Celia, Ward would never have expected a woman to be so aggressive.

  She shoved the sangsal-infected pirate into the room, and his light-sucking sangsal vanished, letting the weak magic in the temple’s wall flood back into the hall. Ward dashed after her.

  Inside lay a spacious sleeping chamber like the one he and Celia had been given when they’d first arrived. It was sparsely furnished, with two large pallets covered in pillows on either side of a small table topped with half a dozen candle stubs, a ceramic jug, and a tin mug on top. On the back wall of this room were three large open arches leading to a balcony. Half of the balcony was shaded by an oak tree, and beyond stood the rise with the Gate to the Abyss and the gnarled ibagen tree.

  She sliced a shallow gash across the pirate’s chest, forcing him back a few more steps into the center of the room. He growled, and a smoke whip materialized from his hand.

  The sangsal within Ward shuddered, and a thread snaked around his hands. The pirate’s eyes flashed wide, and Celia used the distraction to jab in. He staggered back, blocking her strike with his sword. The best Ward could do was act as a distraction and hope she got in a lucky shot.

  Ward rushed at the man. But the pirate snapped his smoke whip at Ward’s neck. It bit into his skin, drawing cold and pain, then tightened.

  The pain grew, and he grasped at it. Ice swept over his neck and down his chest, flooding him. The sangsal within him seared so cold it burned. It rushed around his hands and shot down the pirate’s whip.

  The pirate tugged back, and Celia jabbed at him. He twisted, and her blade skimmed his side. The sangsal from Ward’s hands enveloped half of the pirate’s whip, growing darker, more substantial. The pirate yanked his whip back, but only half the length remained. Ward’s sangsal flooded back into him, colder and stronger than before. He’d taken some of the pirate’s sangsal. The room darkened, the red tint brighter. He needed more power, more sangsal, more blood. He needed it all.

  He rushed at the pirate, who bolted onto the balcony.

  We can’t let him get away. The compulsion to run faster shot through the soul chain, but he didn’t need Celia to spur him on. The sangsal howled like a blizzard to go after the pirate, to kill him and consume him.

  The pirate ran to
the end of the balcony, glanced back at Ward, then jumped for the closest tree branch. He scrambled to the far side of the tree and dropped, half falling, half climbing, to the ground.

  Ward scrambled after him, more falling than climbing. He hit the ground hard. A flash of pain bit his side and vanished. More pain through his ankle, then gone. They couldn’t afford to let him find help.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Celia raced around a jagged thrust of rock and crashed through a cluster of pine branches after Ward and the sangsal-infected pirate.

  The pirate climbed the rise to the fissure. She couldn’t let him get there and cross the octagon. It was difficult enough keeping Ward from losing himself to the sangsal on this side of the octagon, and even now the sangsal within him was getting stronger. She could feel it freezing her chest around her heart, which had to be coming from Ward and the soul chain. Somehow, the sangsal was making her feel the soul chain and a frenzied, monstrous darkness that came with it. She could only hope concentrating on stifling it helped keep Ward from succumbing to it.

  She scrambled after the pirate, pushing herself to move faster. The pirate’s hands reached the top. His feet skidded on the rocky ground, showering her with stones as he readied to pull himself up.

  “No. You. Don’t.” She snatched his pant leg, yanked hard, and they crashed down the rise. Ward wrenched out of the way but lost his balance. The pirate slammed his elbow into Celia’s chest. Lightning-sharp pain exploded through her. He’d broken a rib. She drew her dagger, grabbed the pirate’s hair, and exposed his neck. But both his hands flew to hers, and sangsal smoke shot around her arms to her neck. Ice cut into her throat and tightened, stealing her breath. She jerked to free her dagger hand and stab him, but the smoke forced her hands farther from him. Her chest burned, the broken rib stabbing and the need for air crushing.

  With a growl, Ward seized the pirate’s dagger from his belt and drove it into his heart. Misty breath writhed around his head, and sangsal smoke whipped around him and gushed from the pirate. The veins in Ward’s neck thickened. More raced over his face, appearing and disappearing under his skin. He tipped his head back, opened his mouth, and the sangsal rushed into him.