Bloodforged (39 page)

Ulrika clenched her jaw, struggling for patience. ‘So he is at home?’

The old lady shook her head. ‘The duke’s men said no. They went there to take him to the opera, then came here.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘What you want with the professor? Do you know where is?’

‘If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’ snapped Ulrika.

She and Stefan pushed past the old woman and crossed to the door. She followed them with her eyes as they stepped out into the Academy grounds, muttering under her breath.

Ulrika sighed as they started across the campus. ‘I fear you are right,’ she said. ‘These disappearances must be in preparation for tomorrow night. The cult will kill the blind girl and Valtarin and the professor in some ritual. If only we could find–’

She stopped short as she heard someone whistling in the distance – a wild, haunting melody, and very familiar. ‘The song!’ she said, looking around. A fog had risen while they had been looking for Padurowski, and the grounds of the Academy were thick with it, the trees and buildings looming out of it like towering ghosts. She could see nothing.

Stefan listened too, his eyes growing hard. ‘The Fieromonte played that song.’

‘Forget I spoke,’ said Ulrika, smiling wolfishly. ‘The cult seems to have come to us.’

‘How courteous of them,’ said Stefan.

They stalked across the quadrangle in the direction of the whistling, but as they neared the fountain in the centre, another whistle repeated the melody off to their right. They turned towards the new sound, drawing their swords and going on guard. A third whistle came from behind the faculty building, then a fourth far to the left. Still they could see nothing. The fog and the shrubs and trees that dotted the Academy grounds hid everything, though Ulrika could detect heart-fires on the perimeter of her perceptions. There were dozens of them.

‘Surrounded,’ said Stefan, growling.

The whistling stopped, as suddenly as it had begun, and the night was utterly silent. Ulrika and Stefan turned in a slow circle, staring all around. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. Ulrika didn’t like it.

‘What are you waiting for!’ she shouted. ‘Come out and fight!’

A sharp snapping came from all sides, and a dozen black shafts darted out of the mist. Ulrika and Stefan dodged and batted them from the air with their rapiers. Crossbow bolts. One passed so close that the fletching brushed Ulrika’s left ear. Stefan snatched another out of the air.

‘Silver-tipped,’ he said, looking at it. ‘Naturally.’

Ulrika turned in a circle, snarling and spreading her arms. ‘Face me, you cowards! Steel to steel!’

Another volley of bolts shot towards her, but Stefan tackled her and they zipped harmlessly overhead.

‘We can’t win here,’ he hissed. ‘We must fall back.’

‘But we’ll lose them again.’

‘We won’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll draw them off and take them when they spread out to find us. Come on!’

Ulrika saw the sense of that. She rolled up with him and ran in the direction of the street, on the far side of the lecture halls. A rain of bolts whistled after them, but they dodged and weaved and the missiles shot past. Three cultists rose from the bushes before them, waving swords. Ulrika and Stefan cut them down without slowing.

As they sprinted on, Ulrika saw more than a score of hooded silhouettes coursing through the grounds after them, crossbows and swords in their hands. Most were falling back, unable to match their speed, but a few paced them, as swift as greyhounds.

‘They’re separating,’ said Stefan. ‘Just a little further.’

Ulrika nodded. They burst from the trees and clattered onto the cobbled street. There was an alley opposite, a darker grey in the grey of the fog. They ran for it, the swiftest of the cultists close behind.

‘Now we must lose them,’ said Stefan as they splashed through the alley muck. ‘Then double back as they split up to search.’

Ulrika grinned. ‘You’ve done this before.’

‘An old trick with vampire hunters,’ said Stefan. ‘They think they have you, and you have them.’

They led the cultists a twisting chase through the back alleys and mews of the student quarter, leaping fences and dodging around heaps of garbage, then finally Stefan stopped at the back of a stone carver’s shop and listened. Their pursuers’ footsteps echoed to them out of the fog, a block or so behind.

‘Now!’ he said. ‘Up to the roofs. We will watch them pass from there.’

He motioned for Ulrika to start up before him. She jumped and caught a jutting beam end, then spidered up the wall of the workshop. Stefan started up after her, but just as she was pulling herself onto the roof, he grunted and slipped, then toppled back into the alley.

Ulrika turned and saw him lying in the mud below her, writhing in pain. ‘Stefan!’

He did not reply. Her chest constricted with fear. She clambered swiftly back down to kneel beside him. Their pursuers’ footsteps were getting closer.

‘Stefan,’ she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

He jerked something from the back of his leg – a silver-tipped bolt. It was running with blood. Ulrika swore. She hadn’t even heard the shot.

‘Help me up,’ he said, wincing.

Ulrika took his arm and lifted him to his feet, looking nervously for the shooter. She saw nothing in the fog. Stefan’s knees buckled and he fell against her.

‘On!’ he rasped, motioning to a nearby corner. ‘I can’t climb!’

Ulrika threw Stefan’s arm over her shoulder and helped him around the corner, trying to look at his leg. The wound was hidden by the cloth of his breeches, but they were drenched with blood.

‘Don’t slow down,’ he hissed. ‘Hurry.’

Ulrika ran on, hauling Stefan along. The sounds of pursuit were all around them now and he was hissing with every step.

‘It’s no good,’ he said, lurching beside her. ‘They will follow the trail of my blood. We will not escape them.’

‘Just keep going,’ said Ulrika.

She pulled him into a yard and around the side of a tenement. She could hear the cultists coming into the alley behind them as they hurried towards the front.

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding. ‘Keep going. But not together. We must part ways. They will follow my blood and you can get away. I will see if I can catch one and speak to him.’

‘But–’ said Ulrika.

He cut her off with an impatient hand. ‘We two cannot fight these daemon-lovers alone, this night proves it. You must go back to the Lahmians and get them to help you. It is your only hope of defeating the cult.’

‘But they’ll kill me,’ said Ulrika.

They ran across a side street to another alley, Ulrika practically carrying Stefan in her arms. A fence blocked the far end.

‘Tell them I’m dead,’ he said, leaning against the wall as she tore a plank from the fence.

Ulrika looked back at him. ‘What?’

‘Tell them I died fighting the cultists,’ he said. ‘That I died defending you.’ He laughed. It sounded like he was being strangled. ‘Tell them you are no longer my “dupe”.’

‘But you’re not going to die!’ said Ulrika.

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Stefan. ‘But it might be better if they thought I had. The Lahmians have the connections to stop the concert, and a web of spies to find the cult again if I fail here, but, because of me, they won’t help you. So, it is best if I vanish. Now, take to the roofs. I’ll draw these fools off.’

‘You can’t,’ she protested. ‘You’re hurt. You can barely walk.’

‘A wolf is at his most dangerous when cornered. I will meet you at the bakery and give you what information I have learned. Now go.’

‘No,’ she said, and turned towards the footsteps that were echoing nearer behind them. How could she go? How could she leave him when she had just found him – when she had only just discovered what they could have together? What if this was the last time she ever saw him?

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll fight by your side.’

Stefan snarled. ‘Fool! You will win no vengeance against these madmen if you die here! You must live to foil their plans and destroy them.’ He shoved her. ‘Go!’

Ulrika clenched her fists, not wanting to bow to his logic. Finally she cursed, then grabbed and kissed him, biting his lips angrily, before pushing him away and glaring at him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My answer is yes.’

Then she fled up the wall as the sound of footsteps grew loud in all directions.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY

It was not Severin who answered Evgena’s door this time, but Raiza, and she held her sabre drawn and ready. Ulrika was startled to see that the swordswoman’s left arm now ended in a jointed steel gauntlet.

‘I told you I would not spare you again,’ she said.

Ulrika raised her hands. ‘Tell the boyarina that Stefan von Kohln is dead,’ she said. ‘And that I continue to uphold my vow to her.’

Raiza didn’t seem to hear. ‘Draw your blade,’ she said evenly. ‘I would not kill you unarmed.’

‘Sister, please,’ said Ulrika. ‘You saw the cultists at their work. You know their threat is real. I have learned their plan now, but alone I can’t stop them. Boyarina Evgena is my best hope. Please–’

‘Draw your blade,’ Raiza repeated.

Ulrika dropped her hands to her rapier, but instead of drawing, she unbuckled her sword belt and threw it at Raiza’s feet, then spread her hands. ‘Would I come here to certain death if I wasn’t sincere? You may do what you like with me, only hear me first. I beg you.’

Raiza looked from her to the rapier, then toed it into the entry hall. ‘Wait here,’ she said, then used the tip of her sabre to close the door.

Ulrika let her shoulders relax. She was at least not dead, though from Raiza’s impassive expression she couldn’t tell if the swordswoman was going to plead her case or gather reinforcements.

She looked over her shoulder into the foggy night and shivered. Somewhere out there, Stefan was fighting the cultists, wounded and alone. She tried to shake the image of him falling to the ground with a silver-tipped crossbow bolt in his back, but she could not. She knew he had insisted she leave him, but if he truly died, she would never forgive herself. Not even vengeance on the cult would free her of that.

Her mind returned to the golden future Stefan had conjured for her – together forever, ruling Praag. She wanted it so deeply she ached. And, really, Praag was the least of it. She would give up that if only she could be with Stefan and live as they wished for the rest of time. Of course they would have to survive the cult, and Kiraly, and then there was the small matter of having pledged her eternity to Evgena, but perhaps if she protected her from those threats and abided by her vow, the boyarina would reward her with her release.

Ulrika sighed. Aye, perhaps, but nothing Evgena had done so far gave her any reason to hope. Ursun’s teeth, why had she made that vow? How could she have allowed herself to be trapped in Evgena’s stifling embrace for all time when true happiness was within her grasp?

The door opened and Raiza held it with her steel hand, her sabre still at the ready.

‘She will see you,’ she said. ‘But know you are unlikely to live long if you enter here.’

Ulrika swallowed, glancing to either side of the door, where the massive bears had resumed their pedestals, then nodded. ‘I will take the chance.’

Raiza bowed Ulrika in, then led her again through the dusty, trophy-crowded halls. Ulrika noticed that many of the perches and stands were now empty. She smiled to herself. A few less to deal with if she did have to fight her way out again.

The boyarina waited in the drawing room with the red walls and the cold fireplace as she had before, sitting stiff and upright on her divan with bright-eyed Galiana in a chair beside her. Raiza left Ulrika standing before her and resumed her usual position at Evgena’s shoulder, her sword still drawn. Men-at-arms stood around the walls, also with drawn steel.

‘He is dead?’ Evgena asked, without preamble. ‘You are sure of it?’

Ulrika shook her head. ‘I cannot be sure, mistress, but I cannot imagine how he would have survived.’

The boyarina’s posture grew even more rigid. ‘What do you mean? If you have entered my house under false pretences you will die for it.’