In the end, he needed to be able to face his mother with a clean conscience. So, as he shaved, he quietly revised his goals. He
would
find freedom,
would
find someplace anonymous to hide, but only
after
he had properly disposed of this weapon. Perhaps delivered it into the hands of someone he trusted to use it to fight.
Isa took a step toward the sword. Siris snatched it by reflex, dropping the razor to the basin with a clatter.
“Touchy,” she noted, then reached past him—and the sword—to pick up what appeared to be a soap dish made entirely of silver. The motion put her close to him. Close enough that he readied himself to slap her hand if she tried to knife him in the gut.
She stepped back and held the soap dish up to the light. Her scent lingered close to him. No perfume. She smelled of leather and of wax. Good smells.
She dropped the dish into her pouch.
“Looting?” he said. “You’re nothing but a common thief.”
Isa slung her crossbow over her shoulder—she wore it on a strap, like an over-arm pack. “Hardly.”
“Then what are you?” Siris asked, genuinely curious.
“A person who gets things done,” she replied, turning and walking toward the exit.
“For a price, I assume.”
“There’s always a price,” she said. “Thing is, if you’re lucky, someone else ends up paying it for you. I’m going to go wait down below until you decide to hire me.”
She turned to leave.
“Wait. What did you just say?”
She looked back at him. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going to let me take the blade—”
“I’ll die before you lay hands on it.”
“I don’t doubt that’s true,” she said, a twinkle to her eye. “Answer something for me. How did you find your way to this castle?”
“Everyone knows where it is. You just keep following the river until you reach the cliffs.”
“And I assume that before coming here, you hadn’t ever left your little town?”
“Why would I have needed to?”
She just smiled. “I know where everything is—
everything
—and I can get you wherever you want to go. Keep that in mind as you contemplate sitting here, in a castle
everyone
knows how to find, holding a weapon that everyone wants.”
She strode out the door.
What a strange woman,
Siris thought, holding the Infinity Blade close. Her last words lingered with him.
In a castle everyone knows how to find . . . a weapon everyone wants . . .
After a moment of consideration, he went looking for Strix.
“G
REAT MASTER
,” Strix said from beside the broken throne. “It is so wonderful to see you well. The golems’ attack did not harm you greatly, did it?”
Siris didn’t reply at first. He walked around the throne, feet crunching on bits of broken marble. He’d found the yellow-faced daeril poking and prodding at the God King’s broken seat, ostensibly trying to fix it.
Siris rounded the throne and stepped up to the daeril. Siris regarded Strix for a moment, then grabbed the gaunt daeril by the throat, hauling him up and slamming him back against the remnants of the side of the throne. He held the Infinity Blade in his other hand.
The daeril’s black eyes bugged out, and he tried to gasp for breath. “Great . . . master . . . Why . . . ?”
“Who is it you serve?”
The daeril’s eyes grew more panicked. “Master . . . I . . . of course I serve you . . .”
“You are a smart one, Strix,” Siris said. “You know that it’s dangerous to be found here. The other Deathless will slaughter you for what you know of the God King’s death. I can understand why Kuuth stayed; he doesn’t care about life. But you? You stayed for a reason.”
The daeril struggled, eyes widening.
Siris tightened his grip.
“Who do you serve?” Siris demanded.
Something crunched behind him.
Siris spun without thinking, the Infinity Blade lashing out. He’d intended to behead the person sneaking up on him. Instead, he sliced through his fifteen-foot-tall opponent’s stomach.
Kuuth, the blind troll, stumbled back, blood dribbling down his waist. His large, treelike staff clattered to the floor. He’d been about to smash Siris across the head.
“Hell take me!” Siris yelled.
Traitors! Kill them both! Bring them pain. Make them
fear.
He spun on Strix and drove the Infinity Blade into the stone of the throne, just beside the creature’s head. “What,” Siris bellowed, “is going on?”
“Do not blame Strix, warrior,” Kuuth said in his rumbling voice. The aged troll gasped in pain, then went down on his knees. “He did as I instructed him.”
“Kuuth,” Siris said, turning. The dying troll toppled onto his side. “Why . . .”
“We serve our master, warrior,” Kuuth said, voice growing softer. “It is . . . what we were created . . . to do . . .”
“Your master is dead!”
Kuuth fell still.
Siris spun on the quivering daeril beside the throne. Strix shrank down farther.
Kuuth had tried to get him to stay in the palace. That must have been what the entire conversation had been intended to do. Make him trust the troll, make him agree to remain behind. Where he could be found.
Siris leaned in. “
What. Did. He. Mean
?”
“The Infinity Blade doesn’t work yet,” Strix said, cowering. “The God King was preparing it with the souls of your bloodline! He thought killing you would be the last step. But he didn’t kill you. He—”
He fell to me,
Siris thought.
Which meant . . . if the sword didn’t work yet . . .
The God King is still alive. He knows where I am.
Oh, hell.
Siris stumbled back, pulling the Infinity Blade from the stone and clutching it. Strix rubbed his neck, standing up and coughing. “He’ll come for you soon,” Strix said, hatred in his eyes. “I don’t know why he let you defeat him, or why he ordered Kuuth to answer your questions. But this is all part of his plan. Everything is
always
part of his plan.”
Siris longed to strike the daeril down, but he stopped himself. There had been a time he’d fought only when someone challenged him. Where had this bloodthirst come from?
The sword,
he thought.
It’s corrupting me. I can’t even use it, and it’s corrupting me.
He stumbled back farther, and Strix laughed. “Flee. He will find you, human. He will reclaim what is his, and you will come to learn—as your ancestors learned—the price of defiance!”
Clutching the Infinity Blade, Siris fled.
T
RUE TO HER WORD
, Isa was lounging outside when Siris burst from the castle’s outer court gate. She tucked a book into the pocket of her long coat and slung her crossbow over her shoulder. “So, where are we going?”
“The God King is alive,” Siris said, panting. He’d gathered his armor and regrown his shield, though he hadn’t taken the time to don the armor. He had it tied in his cloak, slung over his shoulder, and wore the Infinity Blade at his side in the improvised sheath that didn’t fit it very well.
“Well, he
is
immortal,” Isa said. “People like that have a tendency toward, you know, not dying.”
This upended everything. He hadn’t won. He’d
failed
.
“I need to find a way to make the Infinity Blade function,” Siris explained. “It . . .” He stopped. Telling her that the God King had planned to make it work by killing Siris didn’t seem particularly wise. In fact, telling her anything didn’t seem particularly wise.
But he was alone, ignorant, and running low on options. Isa seemed to know it, for she was watching him with a sly smile.
Siris took a deep breath. “You said you know how to get everywhere. So . . .”
“‘Making the Infinity Blade work’ isn’t a place, whiskers.”
“I need to find someone to help me. Maybe someone to take the sword off my hands. Can you find the Worker of Secrets?”
Isa froze, and he felt a sliver of satisfaction—through the anxiety—at having finally said something that surprised her. “The Worker of Secrets is a myth,” she said. “Pure fabrication. Nobody fights back against the Deathless. Nobody.”
“I did. You seem to have been intending to, in some way.”
Isa didn’t respond.
“The Worker made the Infinity Blade,” Siris said, though he had gotten that information from Kuuth. Could he trust anything that troll had told him?
The God King told him to answer my questions. Why?
“Yes, it’s said the blade is the Worker’s creation,” Isa replied, which shocked him. She
did
know about it. Or was she playing along?
Terrors,
he thought.
What am I doing? I can’t handle this. All I know how to do is kill people
. It appeared he couldn’t even do that properly.
“The Worker of Secrets,” Isa said thoughtfully. “Ancient enemy of the Deathless, trapped in a prison where time does not pass—his punishment for making a forbidden weapon.”
“What do you know, Isa?” he said, pointing at her. “What do you
really
know about all of this?”
“Not as much as it seems,” she said lightly. “And certainly not where the Worker is imprisoned, if he even exists.”
“You said you can take me anywhere.”
“Anyplace not mythical, whiskers,” she said skeptically, folding her arms. “I think the Worker is probably a rumor spread among the Deathless to cover up the true origins of the Infinity Blade.”
“Well, we have to go somewhere,” Siris said, looking back at the castle. It seemed hollow and empty. A throne without a king. “Let’s get moving, for now. I’ll . . . I’ll think about what to do.”
Isa shrugged, then started down the path. He followed, hoping he didn’t look as uncertain as he felt.
I’
M A CHILD
,
Siris thought.
A child playing at games only the adults understand.
He trudged along the road, his armor heavy in his pack. Isa, it turned out, had a horse—a luxury that nobody in Drem’s Maw had been able to afford. She clomped along the road behind him, humming a tune softly to herself, wearing a narrow hat with a wide brim to keep off the sun.
He’d always wanted to ride a horse. What would it be like? He shook his head, trying to force his thoughts away from that path. The world was crumbling. What did horses matter?
And yet, a piece of him still struggled to discover itself. He wanted to live, to
thrive
. He wanted to know things, be things, experience things. He’d always denied himself the slightest bit of pleasure, worried that if he tasted the life of a real person, he’d develop a hunger for it.
He’d been right. He’d tasted it now. He was ruined.
And he was happy for it.
Perhaps Isa would help him achieve that; perhaps not. It seemed terribly convenient that she would arrive, decide not to kill him, and now offer to take him wherever he wanted to go. There had been no discussion of price. Probably because they both knew her leading him was merely an excuse for her to stay near the Infinity Blade, and perhaps get a chance to snatch it.
I should ditch her,
he thought.
Go on alone.
Go where?
Into hiding? He could make his way into the mountains, alone, live off the land . . . only, he had never learned how to do something like that. Beyond that, what good would it do to hide with the Infinity Blade? Potentially the only weapon humankind had for fighting back against the Deathless?
I need to find people who are fighting back. Give the sword to them.
The Worker of Secrets, if he existed, would be a place to start. If not him, then some other rebellious group. Surely something like that existed.
“You realize that this looks odd,” Isa noted.
He looked up at her, frowning.
“Me riding,” she explained, “and you walking like that. It looks unusual. I assume you want to be . . . what is the word in your language? Inconspicuous?”
Was she going to invite him to ride with her? The prospect of being that close to her made him wary, and he glanced at the knives on her belt. He also found himself intrigued by the prospect of being that close to her, however, and he tried to quash the emotion.
She tried to kill you,
he reminded himself.
And will probably try again.
Still, it would be nice to try riding a horse.
“Yes, this is not very inconspicuous,” she said, looking at him appraisingly, “not with a weapon like that. You
could
be my guard, but anyone we pass is going to wonder why a woman in simple leathers can afford a guard. I don’t look like a merchant—and there are no wares besides—but I’m certainly not going to pass as one of the Devoted or the Favored.”
“I don’t suppose you have a fancy dress tucked away in your saddlebags?” Siris asked.
She raised an eyebrow at him, looking highly amused.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Assuming you want to travel incognizant,” she said, “we need to do something about the sword.”
“Wait, incognizant?”
“Wrong word? In . . . I swear there was one.”
“Incognito?”
“Yes, that’s it. What a stupid language. Anyway, if you want to travel
incognito
, we need to do something about that sword.” She made a great show of thinking it over, then sighed loudly. “Guess you’ll just have to let me tie the sword to the saddle up here, where I can cover it with a blanket.”
“You really think I’m that stupid?”
She just chuckled, reaching into her saddlebags. “Merely trying to measure your stupidity, whiskers. You soldier types get knocked upside the head frequently. Who knows how forgetful you might become?” She pulled something out and tossed it to him. A cloak, nicer than the one he’d used to pack up his armor. “Tie that on, let it drape over your left side. Maybe it will hide the weapon well enough to turn aside questioning eyes.”
He lifted up the cloak, looking at it carefully, wary of some kind of trap.