It wasn’t thunder. It was the Storm, held by a Champion’s leash. Nicolette marched on Queensfane Village. The Witch Knight held an army of the dead on a tether of lost souls, burning a choking, corrupted path through the belly of Ravenswall. And she really, really wanted Meriwether.
Screams made faint by distance carried on the wind. They may as well have been the cries of gulls. Lightning lashed the sky, cracking the Three’s whip as Nicolette came to finish them.
The dragon hadn’t managed to kill Nicolette. Israel hadn’t bested her, even with Vertiline’s help. She wanted Meriwether, or at least the knowledge he carried. When she got it she would tear the righteous from the Tresward, corrupting it into a force for evil.
Which means she’ll write names in the damn book, including Geneve’s. Meriwether clenched his fists. “Remember when I said we should run?” He scratched his bearded chin, which made him look up. Just in time to see black-clothed people high above, clinging like limpets. Four held the roof like spiders. Meriwether wasn’t sure if he or they were more surprised, so he blurted, “Assassins!”
The four dropped. The throne room was twenty meters floor to ceiling but the assassins landed like they’d hopped off a stool. Meriwether saw blades, steel’s brightness dulled by lampblack, the weapons hungering.
Two went for the queen, the others for Israel and Vertiline. Meriwether wanted to do something, but he wasn’t fast, or strong. Morgan’s guards weren’t fast enough, blades barely a handbreadth from scabbards when the first assassin’s padded boots hit the floor.
Luckily, Geneve was.
She’d moved at Meriwether’s alarm. Her hand found the hilt of a guardsman’s sword, and she kicked the man back, sword drawing as he tumbled to the floor. Her borrowed steel rang as she parried a cut to Morgan’s neck from the left, then chimed again as she blocked the other assassin’s thrust to the queen’s chest.
Israel’s glass blade didn’t make a noise as it parted an assassin’s sword, then its wielder’s skull and chest to exit through his groin. Vertiline didn’t appear to change her posture a millimeter as her glass licked once, twice, three times to leave her opponent in four separate pieces on the ground.
Geneve spun, steel sluicing red rain as an assassin’s head left his shoulders. She kept the motion flowing as the final assassin struck. Her borrowed blade cracked, steel splintering. The assassin’s eyes were bright with glee as he lunged. She accepted his advance, one hand closing about his wrist, other driving the broken teeth of her sword through the man’s skull.
His wet slump was followed by silence.
“About that running thing,” Meriwether said, just in case people hadn’t got the idea the first time.
Israel shook his head. “There is no point.” He retrieved a small glass globe about the size of a child’s fist from an assassin’s pouch. “All-Seeing Eye.”
Vertiline growled. “So Nicolette knows who’s here, and what we said? Perfect.” Her eyes frosted over like hard southern ice.
The queen’s guard, eyes wide, gathered around their ward. Morgan’s eyes were a hard, glittering match for Vertiline’s. “This Nicolette and I need an accounting.” She glanced at her guardsman who’d lost his blade to Geneve. “Get another blade. And one for the Knight Adept, too.” As the man scurried to comply, she held up her hand for his attention. “Two things, guardsman. Do not take it to heart you were bested by the best. And make sure your new blades are the best steel possible. I feel they’ll be tested many times today.”
“This is sinner’s magic.” Israel glanced from the All-Seeing Eye to Meriwether. “I mean no offence.”
“Of course you do.” Armitage sauntered to the body wreckage pile, kicking a headless corpse with enthusiasm. “You can’t help yourself, but you definitely mean offense. You want to cut him down, or put him in a cage, but what’s really grinding your gears is knowing without his warning you’d have three feet of steel in your belly. They caught you flat-footed, Tresward man.”
Meriwether looked between the two hulks, decided it wasn’t really about him, and turned to the queen. “Your Grace, do you have a back way out of here?”
She eyed him with the cool disdain of someone with secrets they didn’t want to share. “No.”
“Okay, where are they?”
“I said—”
“I was there when you said it.” Meriwether scratched his beard again, but the ceiling shed no more assassins. “We’re going to split up, but,” he held a palm out to Geneve as she looked ready to get in the middle, “only for a little while. I’ll get you safe. The cat’s with me. We’ll send the B-team to face the witch of doom, and once we’ve got you squared away, the cat and I will return, and he’ll shoot her in the eye.”
Armitage narrowed his eyes. “Who’s the B-team?”
“Easy, champ,” Meriwether said. “They’re the ones who can’t make illusions or move silently.”
Queen Morgan pressed her lips in a line. “How do you propose to spirit me away?”
“Out the back, like I said.” Meriwether offered her another smile, this one a little gentler. “This isn’t the first time I’ve run from the law, you know.”
* * *
The ‘back door’ was behind the throne. Queen Morgan rapid-fired instructions to her Coterie. Assist the Knights. Protect your friends. Run if you have to. Then she touched a stud on the back of her throne, and it rotated aside revealing steps into the dark.
They’d ducked inside and hurried along a narrow but not disreputable corridor. Two of Morgan’s honor guard roamed ahead, two behind. Sight of Day was with Meriwether and the queen, a borrowed bow in hand. Stone walls free of cobwebs led straight ahead. Spheres set in sconces lit at their approach, lending a clean warm light to their passage. Morgan touched one. “The benefits of having wizards.”
Meriwether marveled at the spheres. Such a simple thing would do so much for so many, but the Tresward hunts us like dogs. “I hope you can stand against the Tresward.”
“I hope I don’t have to.” She stood close to Meriwether, because the tunnel wasn’t roomy. He smelled lavender and tried to ignore it. “War isn’t what I want.”
“Got it.” Meriwether worried at his beard. Since this morning’s trim, it’d reverted to the itchy phase. “You’ll need to send your guards elsewhere.”
“You’re joking, of course.”
“I’m definitely not. We’re trying to hide you, Your Grace. Once we’re outside, anyone with four guards looks like someone important.”
She considered it. “And where are we going?”
“Dockside inn.” He looked away. “We’ll get a room—”
“We will not.”
“And once we’ve got the room, you’ll stay there, and we’ll go watch while the Knights save your kingdom.” Meriwether felt his smile lose a little balance in the face of her hard, dark eyes. “Trust me.”
“Unlikely.”
* * *
Which was how they arrived at the Sailor’s Arms, an inn three copper barons above seedy. Meriwether entered with the queen after attiring her with illusions to look like a doxy he’d seen outside: tawdry skirts replaced the magnificent red gown, and a blouse with too many ruffles completed the picture.
As a concession to the situation, Meriwether had two of her guards nurse mead in the taproom below, after shucking their honor-black armor. Their blades came with them, but a sword was a sword and everyone here had one.
Speed was of the essence. He needed to get Morgan hidden before everyone ran for their lives. The streets already surged with panic, but no one was sure what they should be panicking about.
He scattered coins on the bartop, one possessive hand on Morgan’s arm, and demanded a key. “Hurry, sir.” He put a little wheedling in his tone as he danced from foot to foot.
The innkeeper, a man almost perfectly spherical, swept the coins aside with a leering wink, and put a key in Meriwether’s hand. Meriwether hustled Morgan upstairs, kicked the door of their room open, and gave her the key. “Lock yourself in.”
She eyed him, and he was certain frost spread across the floor between them. “After this we’ll talk about how you handle the royal person.”
“After this, if we’re alive to talk, you can shout all you like.” He pulled the door closed, dashed downstairs, and headed for where everything he held dear waited. Sight of Day followed, barely a step behind, his golden eyes on everything at once. He hurried through Ravenswall as panic swelled. Smoke blackened the sky from the south, Nicolette’s army of dead hungering for the living.
Meriwether ignored that, because he couldn’t fix it. He needed to get to the Brook District.
To Geneve.
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