Rogue Evolution

by James Hunter

  “Blood price?” Roark’s mind reeled, trying to unravel what she was saying.

  Using his moment’s hesitation, she pulled her body out of line and swept inside his measure. Roark stumbled backward, blocking a series of sharp dal polso cuts aimed at his face and shoulders, just managing to keep them on the thick forte of his blade, near the hilt. His arm was wearing down, muscles exhausted by the taxing Discordant Inversion techniques after a day of fighting for his life against enemies far above his level. Talise had read that in his movements, and now she was exploiting it. She fought like their father, emotionless and shrewd, but unlike Sir Erick, there was no mercy in her watchful gray eyes.

  “How far did you get before your gold ran out, brother?” Their blades clashed, and she bore down. Just for a second. Just long enough to sap a bit more of his flagging strength. Roark saw his filigreed Stamina bar appear, trickling away as she slowly but steadily wore down his resistance. She attacked again, pressing him. Costing him more precious Stamina. “Was it enough to buy you peace from our parents’ restless souls?”

  “What in the seven bloody hells are you on about?” he demanded, narrowly turning aside a deadly thrust. But that left him open on the left.

  With a whip of her wrist, she sliced a tondo across his chest. He backed up into the brick of the wall, the tip of her blade scoring a deep scratch in his leather armor.

  “Selling our family out like the self-serving deserter you are.” She attacked dalla spalla for the first time, throwing her weight into a heavy overhand blow. When Roark attached swords with her, she bore down again. He was larger than her, but with her superior level she was far stronger despite the size differences. “Leading the Ustars in through the secret tunnels you loved so much.”

  Understanding finally dawned in his fatigued mind, and with it came a burst of fury.

  “Marek told you I betrayed our family?” He feinted left and lashed out with a front kick. His foot landed hard in her sternum, forcing her back, but she recovered her footwork easily. “Bloody hells, Talise, it’s a lie! Do you honestly believe I would do that? That anyone would?”

  “To save their own skin, a coward would,” she said, “and here you stand, very much alive.”

  She attacked again with cold precision in spite of the hatred dripping from her voice. Feeling a surge of his own anger, Roark slammed her blade aside with more force than necessary, leaving his guard open wide. It was a chiamato he’d perfected with Griff—giving his opponent an intentional opening—a deadly gamble if he wasn’t fast enough to turn their next attack against them. He knew he was a bloody fool for trying it when his Stamina was running so low, but the longer this drew out, the more the odds favored her. He had to end it now.

  Talise pulled her body out of line to present him with the smallest possible target and lunged to exploit the opening. The golden tip of her rapier flew straight for his throat. A killing blow if ever there was one.

  Pouring on a final burst of speed, Roark locked blades with her, trapping her wrist against his chest and pressing the Kaiken Dagger to her throat.

  Rather than fall immediately still, however, she raked the nails of her free hand down his face. Roark cursed, gritting his teeth against the pain, and clamped down tighter on her arm. As if she couldn’t care less that a wrong move now would open her throat, she twisted and fought like a trapped bearcat. He pulled the dagger back a fraction, but didn’t release his grip on her blade arm.

  “I ran, damn it!” He forced the words out past the decades-old disgust. “I was a coward. Am one. That much, at least, is true. I carved a blood cantrip in my forearm so I could disappear, and then I ran. While they all died, I ran. But before the Creator, Talise, I never, ever betrayed them.”

  Her clawing stopped. Something flickered in the cold gray depths of her eyes.

  “Hells, I wasn’t much older than you,” he said, his voice softening. “I barely knew there was an uprising going on.” He let out a bitter laugh. “Everything was happy and bloody dandy in my little world until Marek and his Ustars stormed into it.”

  Carefully, he released the pressure on her arm. When she didn’t immediately run him through, Roark let go and stepped away. She fell back into a wary terza guardie, watching him with those unflinching gray eyes for treachery.

  Very slowly, Roark turned his dagger and rapier around and held the hilts out to her.

  “Take them,” he said.

  After a brief hesitation, Talise snatched the rapier from his grasp. Roark smiled wryly. The longer blade would give her the greatest advantage and leave him without the reach to use the dagger. Given only one free hand and two deadly blades to confiscate, it was the one he would’ve taken as well.

  Roark dropped the dagger for good measure.

  “I deserve most of the scorn you assign to me, Talise; I’ve done a lot of bad over the years. Things that haunt my dreams and linger always on the edges of my thoughts.” He couldn’t help but recall Danella’s sidelong smile and blonde hair. “But selling our family to Marek? That I would never have done, no matter what the cost. If you think I did it, then kill me.” He raised his chin, baring his throat. “I won’t stop you. I deserve it for running, if nothing else.”

  Long seconds passed while she studied him. Metal monsters screamed by outside the alleyway, but he hardly heard them over the harsh thudding of his heart. Over the top of Talise’s head he could see the mouth of the alley and noted that they had started to draw a crowd. Human onlookers, pitifully small compared to his Jotnar form. They wore strange outfits—no armor or leathers as the heroes of Hearthworld did—and instead of swords, axes, or bows, each carried a small rectangular black box.

  Most of the onlookers were holding those boxes up, pointing them toward Roark and his sister, though the boxes didn’t seem to be doing anything. He pushed thoughts of the crowd away and focused entirely on Talise. Perhaps she would choose to kill him, but if she did, at least he would die looking at her one last time, knowing that she was alive even when all else was gone.

  “Show me your arm,” she said, the ice still prevalent in her tone. “Show me the scars.”

  It took a moment for Roark to understand which scars she meant. He’d collected more than a few on either arm. When he caught on, however, he untied the rawhide cords connecting the left leather vambrace to the rest of his armor and pulled it off. He turned his wrist so she could see the crude letters carved into his forearm.

  I AM INVISIBLE.

  An audible puff of air left her lungs.

  “It’s true, then.”

  Roark couldn’t tell from her tone whether it was a question, but he nodded all the same.

  Her jaw twitched, then her white-gold features smoothed out once again. She tossed his rapier down at his feet with a clang.

  Tension raced out of his shoulders and legs, far more than he’d realized he felt, and he slumped back against the brick of the building, planting his hands on his knees.

  “Bloody hells, girl,” he panted, unable to withhold the chuckle. “I thought you were going to kill me.”

  Talise didn’t laugh. “Marek afforded me every luxury of education and combat training since the day he began to trust me. I should have been able to without breaking a sweat.”

  Roark grinned at the accusation in her tone.

  “Life afforded me a different set of luxuries,” he said. “Street fighting, backstabbing, and highwayman ambush.”

  “So we both live.” She looked toward the mouth of the alley, turning her icy glare on their spectators. “What now?”

  He took a long breath and blew it back out. He knew what Kaz would do, and not for the first time, Roark wished he had his friend’s enormous heart and simple warmth.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” he said. “What were you supposed to do once you’d killed me?”

  “This place is different than the last. According to Lowen, this is the realm the heroes of Hearthworld reside in. Death here is like death in Traisbin, so he ass
umed I would be able to take the World Stone from your corpse after finishing you. Naturally, I was supposed to bring it back to Lowen so that sniveling lickspittle could take the credit.” A faint sneer tugged at the corner of her lips. “Had I killed you, though, I would’ve gone directly to Marek and handed the pendant over. He only lent me out to Lowen because the fool couldn’t take the stone himself.”

  Roark frowned. “Talise, about Marek...”

  A raucous noise, the shrill sound of some alert siren, filled the air as one of the metal beasts pulled up at the mouth of the alleyway, flashing blue and red lights against the brick walls and the stunned faces of the onlookers. A man and a woman climbed from the creature—some sort of horseless conveyance it seemed—both wearing crisp blue uniforms, heavy belts studded with items, and shining metal badges affixed to their chests. Not so different from the badges Griff had commissioned for his Rumble Crew.

  This pair had the look of the constabulary about them.

  “Hold that thought,” Roark said, motioning Talise toward the brick wall. “Perhaps it would be best if we finished this somewhere a little more private. From what I’ve gathered from my associates about this place, monsters and magick are not common occurrences.”

  He eyed the wall, then jabbed his clawed fingers forward, almost effortlessly sinking them into stone. In seconds, he scrambled up the side of the building, clawing through the mortar and brick, until he crested the lip of the three-story building and pushed off, unfurling his wings as he caught a gust of air. There were no red flight arrows here, but that hardly stopped him from quickly gaining elevation. When he glanced down, he saw that Talise was following, her black raven’s wings beating at the air.

  A good sign, that. If she’d been unwilling to speak with him, she would’ve stayed behind.

  In seconds she was beside him, carving through the air as gracefully as any trained hunting falcon. They swooped and soared, silently eyeing the city before touching down on the roof of a miraculously tall building half a mile or so from where they’d originally spawned. Well away from the onlookers and the potentially dangerous constables.

  For a while, the pair of them just stood there on the top of the building, gazing out at the awe-inspiring view. The magick of Hearthworld had been both mystifying and tantalizing when Roark had first stumbled into this realm from Traisbin. But this...

  Unfathomably high structures of glass and metal, of stone and brick, towered higher than the largest cathedrals and castles he’d ever seen. There were buildings so immense they seemed to reach up and touch the sky, as though challenging the sun and moon for dominion. Streets, all paved with a flawless black stone, were covered by an endless assortment of the colorful metal carriages. Impossible bridges of stone and cable arched gracefully over immense riverways. And the people... Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. More humanity, more life, than in every city in Traisbin combined.

  And if PwnrBwner and Randy were to be believed, this had all been built without the use of magick. Simply incredible.

  “It takes the breath away.” Talise said this in a flat, emotionless voice, but Roark caught her wiping a tear from her cheek. “The vastness of it all.”

  “That it does,” he replied, watching a huge barge of some sort skitter down the riverway. They stood in silence for a few moments longer, letting the awe settle before the posturing and verbal sparring needed to commence again.

  Talise was the one to break the temporary truce.

  “You want to know if I’m loyal to Marek,” she said, resting one hand on the pommel of her golden rapier, now sheathed at her hip. “He’s treated me well. Protected me from scum like Lowen, trained me to use the lawless magick I was born with. He’s even spoiled me with anything I ask for, so long as I behave.” She locked eyes with Roark. “And I do. I’ve been the picture of devotion since Bloederige Noct. I kill when he asks me to, torture whoever he wants answers from, and provide diverting conversation while we take our evening meal. He calls me his granddaughter.”

  Roark’s stomach turned.

  “I don’t think he knows what love is,” Talise finished. “But I think he believes he loves me and that I love him.”

  “Do you?” Roark asked, afraid to hear the answer.

  She gestured to the letters scarring his still exposed forearm.

  “I am invisible, just like you,” she said. “Just another weapon in his armory. Even that sod Lowen is blind to me now. I’m hiding in plain sight.” She waved a hand at Roark, a bored aristocratic motion that reminded him distastefully of the tyrant. “Go ahead and ask.”

  Roark blinked. “Ask what?”

  “Ask me to kill him. I’m sure you want him dead as badly as I do. I kiss his cheek every night and bid him sweet dreams, no one can get closer than I can. Go ahead.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Roark scowled. “If you tried anything, he’d have you cut apart. Even if you did somehow manage to kill him, his lackeys would destroy you before you could make it five steps.”

  She frowned. “You... don’t want me to kill Marek?”

  “I want the monster to die screaming, but I don’t want you to die for it. And if anybody else asks you to assassinate him, I bloody well hope you turn them over to Marek the second they look away.” He grabbed her by the shoulders. She stiffened under his grasp. “Listen to me, Talise. You don’t owe me or anyone else anything. Protect yourself. Don’t give him a single opportunity to turn against you. Do whatever you have to do to survive.”

  For the first time since they’d come through the portal, the ice in her expression entirely melted away. She squinted into his eyes as if she were only now truly seeing him.

  “You really are good, aren’t you?” she said in a low voice.

  That startled a sharp laugh from Roark.

  “Hardly.” He stepped back and crossed his arms. “I just found out my sister was still alive. It’s not beyond imagination that I wouldn’t want her to run off and get herself killed straight away.”

  Talise worried her lower lip. “I have to go back.”

  “No, you don’t. You can stay with us at the Citadel. Or here.” He gestured toward the sprawling expanse of city. True, this place was like none he’d ever seen, and if what Talise said was true, this was the realm PwnrBwner and Randy hailed from. Perhaps he could find them if push came to shove. He was sure they would help him protect her.

  Talise shook her head. “If I stay, Marek will come through the portal himself and raze Hearthworld and this one, too. The lawless magick I can do, I think it comes from the World Stone. He’s been using my abilities in its place since you stole it, but if I disappear after I was sent to kill you, he’ll destroy anything and everything between you and him.”

  “Wait.” Roark held up a hand to stop her. His mind felt like a spinning top. The flash of amber light he’d seen Talise use in the vision floated to the surface of his memories, followed by the questions he’d been asking himself about the World Stone altering the world around it to best suit its needs. It was conceivable that it had given Talise magick from another dimension, the same way it had given Kaz sentience when Roark made him a Greater Vassal. To what end, though, Roark couldn’t even begin to guess. He turned instead to the mention of the Tyrant King. “Come through the portal? Marek has a way to get to Hearthworld?”

  “A stable portal,” she said. “In the Vault of the Radiant Shield’s throne room. It was how I came through. Same for Lowen and all of Marek’s troops. I assumed that was how you’d gotten to Hearthworld.”

  With a smirk, Roark turned his arm over and showed her the faulty portal spell that had brought him to Cruel Citadel.

  She raised one dark brow. “Bleeding hells, Roark, you’re not a roll of parchment.”

  “Don’t tell my skin that,” he joked. He slipped his vambraces back on and tied them in place. “It didn’t work right anyway. Neither have any of the portals I’ve tried inscribing in my spell slots since coming to Hearthworld. I can’t create a usable portal
, let alone one stable enough to put me back in Traisbin.”

  “You’re trying to get back to Traisbin? But why? You got away.”

  He locked eyes with his sister. “I’m going to kill him, Talise. I couldn’t do anything when we were kids, but I can now. I’m done running. If it’s the last bloody thing I do, I’m going to kill the Tyrant King.”

  “Then you’ll need me to go back.”

  “Like seven hells I do. You’re going to hide here in this realm. I just have to get in contact with one of my Greater Vassals—”

  Talise raised her chin and cut him off. “You’ll never get past Lowen without my help, let alone get close enough to kill Marek. I’m your only hope.”

  “I’ll find another way,” Roark insisted.

  “No, you won’t. Not without me.”

  Roark balled his fists at his sides. The worst of it was, she might be right. And even if she wasn’t, the safest place for her truly was back at Marek’s side, playing the dutiful granddaughter-cum-weapon. Nothing could hurt her there but the Tyrant King himself, and she’d already more than proven that she could remain in his good graces without revealing her true hatred.

  “How did you get us here?” he asked.

  “Port stone.” She produced another of the smooth river rocks, turning it over to show him the glowing icy rune carved into the surface.

  “Can it take you directly back to Marek?”

  She shook her head. “It only works between Hearthworld and this place. Lowen has been experimenting with them. He’s sent a number of scouts through already. He’s quite awed with this world you know. I suspect Marek may well try to take it once he has his pendant back.” She shrugged. “But as for the port stones, from here I can take us anywhere in Hearthworld, and from Hearthworld anywhere here.”

  “Good. We need to go to the throne room of the Cruel Citadel.” Roark dragged his claws through his hair, remembering the way he’d left Griff and his troops. Hopefully they had all retreated to the second floor. Lowen probably hadn’t attacked, assuming Talise would stay true to their plan, but if the Herald had, Roark wanted his troops safely holed up on the opposite side of the first floor Curse Chains. “From there, we’ll figure out the safest way to get you back to Traisbin.”