Authors: Tom Lloyd
In the palazzo beyond, she could sense her father moving again. She couldn’t reach him with her thoughts, but his last gift to the pair of them had been the ability to sense him wherever he was. It was a lesser bond than the one with her sister – just a tiny scratching at the back of her mind when she focused on him – but one she knew was the product of Astaren magic.
He hadn’t been able to be any more of a father and it was a feeble gift by some standards, but in the low moments that happened in every life, sometimes it was enough. Though Enchei might have been on another continent and had buried a compulsion to stay away, all their lives they had been able to at least face in his direction.
‘You’re here for me?’ Sorpan shouted back at last.
As he spoke, he tossed a bag high in the air. On instinct Enay raised the lance and caught it with the Dragon’s Breath – only to have the bag ignite in an eye-watering burst of glittering fire. She recoiled from the blinding light as long sparkling trails streamed down through the air and obscured anything beyond them. She changed position almost blind, having to feel her way to another carved standing stone. Blinking furiously, Enay realised from its height the stone was one of the largest in the garden – a robed Lord Pilgrim with arms outstretched in supplication.
‘We’re here for you,’ Maiss replied on her sister’s behalf.
‘Without second skin or armour?’ Sorpan called. ‘No guns or darters? No snares or stings?’
‘We don’t choose the missions,’ Maiss said. ‘No trace of Ghost, that’s the order we got here.’
‘But a Dragon weapon’s allowed?’
Enay answered that with a burst from the lance that scorched a path up the wall behind, a slit window bursting inward under the intense heat. The curtain of glittering light still hung between them, the breeze shifting it slightly while the Dragon’s Breath cut a furrow that dragged trails inward in its wake.
‘You don’t need to die,’ Enay added, though she accompanied it with another burst from the lance. ‘You have his word on that.’
Again, a slight hesitation. ‘Whose word?’
‘The one you went to.’
‘No – no, it’s too late for that.’
Enay felt a moment of panic as Sorpan rose from behind a memorial – not the one she was expecting – and fired two shots in quick succession at her. She flinched away, the shallow wound down the side of her head flaring hot at the movement. Before she could aim the lance again, Sorpan was running forward with Maiss closing on one side. Something detonated with the blinding flash of a starflare as Maiss passed an oval memorial, smashing her sideways out of his path. As Maiss fell heavily Sorpan dodged away, rounding a chunk of stone and lunging for Enay with a glittering blade.
She barely managed to parry with the body of her lance, the impact throwing it to one side and giving him an easy shot at her belly – had it not been for the crack of a musket. Chips of stone exploded by Sorpan’s ear and Enay saw her chance. She dropped the lance and grabbed his arm, levering the pistol away as she punched up at his armpit. The blade inside her palm flashed in the moonlight as it shot out – only to skitter off the second skin Sorpan wore under his clothes.
He struck back with a boot to the gut, but Enay rode the mule-kick blow and twisted in to slash inside the reach of his short-sword. She headbutted the man and swiped a second blade across his throat, but something in his neck resisted the edge and it failed to tear his gullet open. A second gunshot interrupted their struggle and Enay felt it through his body as she sensed her sister pull the trigger from a dozen yards away.
The bullet struck him in the small of the back and she could tell it penetrated his second skin – a lesser armour than the soldier’s one her father wore – but Sorpan only slowed for a moment. He crashed an elbow down on her shoulder and Enay screamed as it jolted from the socket. The impact drove her to her knees, Sorpan almost leaning on her as he pulled back for the killing blow.
With a shriek of anger and pain Enay punched up with her remaining good hand. This time the rigid blade in her fist slammed into the man’s throat and burst the pale mesh of his second skin, driving right through his jugular. Sorpan’s head snapped backwards, hands suddenly weak and feebly pawing at the wound. His oval eyes widened as the pain struck him and then he toppled unceremoniously, limbs enfeebled and unable to support him as his blood gushed black in the starlight.
Scooping up Sorpan’s pistol Enay awkwardly levelled it, determined to make sure of the kill. The blade protruding from her hand made the grip difficult, but she managed to put the gun to his face and fire. The dead Astaren spasmed and kicked before abruptly falling limp, but now Enay moved in even greater haste.
She peeled away and slipped behind the nearest monument as a hiss began to rise from the corpse – spells woven into the second skin releasing the power stored inside it. Out of the corner of her eye a fierce light shone from under his clothes, followed by the
whump
of them igniting and the hiss of his flesh starting to burn.
Enay averted her eyes as the searing light intensified, the heat painful even by her levels of endurance before, within a few heartbeats, the power was spent and the light was replaced by the stink and crackle of skin burning, the acrid stench of super-heated metal scraping at her tongue.
Enay looked up towards her sister. Maiss was sitting up, spent gun in her hand, with blackened streaks and bloody strips of cloth marking her right side. Advancing towards them was the Wyvern knight, Myken, her musket discarded in favour of pistols now, but the woman’s attention was on the burning corpse on the ground rather than Enay.
‘Is that the renegade?’ Myken asked. ‘What did you do to him?’
The young woman grunted and hauled herself up to drape her arm over a stone sleeve of some ancestor of the palazzo’s owners. Using it as a fulcrum she tugged down on her useless arm, inwardly howling at the pain as her shoulder jolted back into place. She leaned on the statue a few moments, panting and fighting the pain.
‘I killed him. The magic inside his armour did the rest. Maiss, you good?’
‘Will that happen to you?’
She looked sharply up then shook her head. ‘No armour for the likes of us. Easiest if we don’t get killed.’
Myken sniffed at that, a rare quizzical look on her face. ‘And people say the warrior caste have a strange attitude towards death.’
‘It’s a family thing,’ was Enay’s sour reply.
‘From what I’ve seen of your father, I can well believe it. Will his armour do the same?’
Enay ignored her and went to help her sister. Maiss was hurt worse than Enay, but it didn’t look life threatening. Blood ran freely from a series of gashes down one side of her head as Maiss tugged a fragment of something from her skin and tossed it aside with a growl. Her left arm hung limp at her side, the clothing and leather armour torn to bloody strips, while a grey splinter protruded from the meat of her thigh.
‘Let’s hope he doesn’t need us,’ Enay said as she wadded up some cloth and pulled the splinter free, jamming the cloth into the wound. Despite her Astaren levels of endurance, Maiss whimpered as between the two of them they tied a strap around the wound. The pain forced her to ease back on the monument she’d been thrown against by Sorpan’s bomb. Enay checked her over for further injuries while Maiss set about reloading a pistol with awkward, stiff fingers, jaw set against the pain.
Myken turned towards the palazzo as a deep roar echoed out over the crash of timbers. The upper windows shuddered and cracked as reverberations shook the stone walls. Enay gritted her teeth and picked up the lance, dragging it over to where her sister leaned.
‘How bad is it?’ the Wyvern knight asked.
‘I can shoot,’ Maiss said through gritted teeth. ‘Just don’t ask me to run.’
Enay nodded and raised the pistol she’d taken from Sorpan. ‘You shouldn’t need to keep loading this one.’
She turned the gun over to inspect it. It looked like any other – well crafted, with a polished brass butt and trigger guard, but lacking any ornamentation. Peering down into the barrel Enay could see it taper inside to a far smaller bore than any normal pistol would have. To check she cocked the weapon and aimed up at the nearest first-floor window. A crisp crack echoed around the stone monuments as a neat hole was punched through the shutter covering it and the tinkle of falling glass followed.
‘That’ll do,’ Maiss declared and reached out to take the gun. ‘Tie something round my arm now?’
Enay nodded and pulled a thin bandage from her pocket – a long strip of cloth ready prepared to slip around an injury and pull tight. In moments Maiss grunted her approval and waved Enay away, finishing the job one-handed herself.
‘Now that back door,’ she said, half to herself.
The palazzo’s rear door was clad in embossed brass – a single sheet depicting rivers and mountains that covered all but an inch around the edge. Levelling the lance, she fired a near-invisible stream of heat and cut through the metal in moments, but just as the wood behind blackened the air around, it seemed to twist and distort. All three women sensed the danger and dived for cover just as a thunderclap and a blinding flash erupted across the garden.
Enay felt something lash over her leg like poison barbs – just a sudden moment of searing pain, but as she blinked away the after-glare she saw her trousers were torn and blackened strips marked her skin. Whatever that had been, she didn’t want to get caught in the full force of it.
She picked herself up, leaning heavily on a cherub-faced stone soldier until the pain ebbed and she trusted her legs again. Next Enay aimed the weapon at the stone wall – testing what effect it had on the stone blocks there, given that the windows were too small to get through. The Dragon’s Breath washed searing light over the ice-rimed stone and a great crack echoed around the garden. Where it touched, the stone blackened and brittle fragments sloughed away. Enay lowered the weapon and peered at the steam-wreathed damage.
There were fissures in the stone, but even as she raised the lance again a reddish glow appeared through them. The light stole around the broken lines and straight edges of the stone blocks, filling them before spreading a dull patina over the damaged surface of the blocks. Enay didn’t bother testing the Dragon’s Breath on it, not wanting to find out what would happen this time or waste the lance’s power on enchanted defences.
‘More bloody traps,’ she said with a wince, ‘I’m really starting to hate these Gealann.’
‘So what now? Upper window?’
Enay inspected the wide wooden frames of the window above. Without replying, she aimed at the one she’d shot through, Maiss and Myken already stepping back. The shutters crumpled under the assault and the window behind burst inward, but there was no explosion of light. Through the wreckage she saw movement, however – a grey ghostly figure that was not lit by the yellow flames dancing around the wrecked window frame.
It looked like a child but Enay wasn’t fooled. As though in confirmation its clawed fingers pulsed briefly red just as an identical light spread around the flame-edged aperture. The ghost moved back out of sight, away from the savage power of the Dragon’s Breath, but Enay saw the warning still.
She held off firing again. The last thing her father needed was the palazzo on fire any more than it was already. Another deep, muffled detonation came from inside, then a renewed monstrous roar and the sound of wood shattering under inhuman violence.
But we’re kept out,
she realised,
that Benthic Knight has him where they want and they’ve made sure they’re not disturbed. Climbing through a window’s not going to be easy with ghosts patrolling – we need another way in.
Enchei thought of death and its shape unfolded in his mind. A warm glow appeared on his chest as a twisting, faceted rune pulsed its readiness. The mantras tumbled through Enchei’s mind without effort – complex lines of prayer engraved by the mage-priests into his soul. He felt the warmth of a lesser rune glow beside the first, one denoting memory, then a third for immobility and a fourth for fury.
Try to take me, you fucking overgrown bat,
Enchei thought savagely,
and I’ll burn your shadow into the wall with my death. Along with this whole palazzo.
He dropped an echo-stone behind him and vaulted a broken table, the echo-stone falling with a stuttered, chaotic clatter of noise that didn’t fade in his wake. He’d left more around the palazzo, forming a cacophony of distraction through which he could creep unnoticed, but now he sprinted for a doorway into the servant quarters on one side of the palazzo.
Inside a wide kitchen he paused, darkly glittering smoke still trailing in his wake. Not far away the demon thrashed in fury at a landing, tearing timbers from the wall above. The smoke was hampering it for certain, but he suspected the Benthic Knight was having to restrain it from tearing the building apart.
A chilly realisation ran down his spine.
Which means she’ll be coming herself.
He moved on instinct, darting to one side just in case that moment’s pause had been enough for her to line up the lash of her cane weapon. A slashing line of nothingness failed to tear a path through where he’d been standing and a small manic smile crept on to Enchei’s lips. Then he glanced down at his chest, where a long tear in his shirt revealed glimpses of a scored line across his chest-plate.
The groove was neat and near-perfectly straight – and deeper than Enchei would have liked to see. Whatever the weapon was, he didn’t want to see the effects of it striking elsewhere. He crossed the kitchen and checked the next room – some sort of antechamber with drape-covered doorways on three sides. As he stepped into the room the right-hand drape was sliced through, a darting red eye carving a path across the table before him. The drape fell amid smoke and darkness, but instead of fleeing Enchei hurled himself through the doorway. Sliding on the ground he fired another volley of darts as he went, arms raised to take any slashing blows that caught him.
The Knight was just a few yards away, her long cane cutting furrows in the stone floor as she brought it back around. Enchei pushed up to sprint the last few yards and get inside her cane’s reach, dagger ready. The Leviathan whipped a glittering swirl of blades forward in her other hand and he only just checked in time, knife and baton held high as he dropped down and stamped forward at her knee. The blow connected in a shuddering burst of sparks and then Enchei was parrying and cutting upwards.
Running half on instinct, incantations of speed and strength flooding his mind, he slashed and battered with inhuman speed at the woman. Shuddering trails of light flared around her face as his blows were stopped by magic of her own, flashing fractures in the air. They traded blows, the clatter of her cascading blades ringing out on his arms and shoulders while he struck up and down her body, trying to find a weak spot before the demon intervened. Through the blur, grey ghosts flourished and disappeared a moment later – a succession of clawing, grasping hands, but he was faster and more savage than them all as the magic sang in his veins, driving him faster.
Enchei punched the glowing runes on his fists into one elbow and was rewarded with a stutter in her movements. Faster than the Leviathan, he twisted away and caught the elbow again from a different angle with the knife. He dipped his shoulder and put all his weight into hammering down with the baton just as her arm was at an awkward angle and something snapped under the blow.
Another slash sent blood spraying up, the impact jerking the knife from his hand even as it spun her half around. Enchei felt a spark of elation as he swung a ponderous fist around to slam into the small of her back. It threw her off-balance but still she had the poise to spin and swipe at him with the cane as she went. Anticipating the blow – heavy enough to shatter the skull of a normal man – he’d already pulled back and it glanced off his helmet.
Enchei rode it and stamped into the side of her knee. She buckled but found the strength to backhand Enchei across the face so hard he was thrown from his feet. Lights and colours burst inside his helmet as his head snapped back, the stone floor rising to hit him like a giant’s punch. He felt his bones creak under the impact and the incantations in his mind wavered as the power of his armour started to fail.
He rolled, avoiding a slash from the cane that split the flagstone apart. Something thudded against his thigh and instinct made him stab down with his knife to dislodge whatever had latched on to his armour.
He dodged the whirling blades but couldn’t avoid a thrust of the cane, only catch it on his arm and fire darts in return. It burned right through his armour and into the flesh within. A moment of blinding pain obscured everything before Enchei sensed looming shadows surround him and instinct tried to hurl him sideways. His leg betrayed him, heavy and unmoving, and it took a second attempt to stab at the spider-like object attached to his leg before it burst apart.
The drain on his strength lessened, but all he could do was drop to his knees and send the surging trails of light surrounding his body into a single flare through the runes on his fists, up into the great claws of shadow descending. Everything went white and still he was nearly crushed by the impact, sledgehammer talons closing around his back before the light could strip their power.
Enchei tried to strike back but his limbs felt leaden and standing upright was enough of a struggle. All around him were swirling trails of smoke and shadow, punctuated by shattered walls and spitting fires. The shell of the palazzo remained intact, a dull red skein covering the more damaged sections, without which it would surely have collapsed.
Ahead of him, the Leviathan woman was unsteady, her fine clothes torn just as his were. The gaps exposed grey scale armour flecked with gold, like some fantastical sea creature. Her arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, turned out at the elbow, but as she retreated he saw her stow her cane before she jerked her injured arm back towards a healthier position. Not a sound broke her lips as she retreated, leaving the enraged demon to do its work.
The Terim’s human vessel was a bloodied mess now – lacerated flesh hung from its body, ghastly wounds showing the white of bone and glistening bulbous innards. None of that mattered to the demon surrounding it, rearing high above the dead man anchoring it to the world while new claws unfurled from the dark. To see a man walking with such monstrous injuries caused memories of the valley to flower again in Enchei’s mind. Then it had been boldness that had kept him alive, patience for the right moment and not a step back until it was done.
Enchei hesitated a moment, on the point of attacking and pressing the advantage, but he could feel that the flow of power in his limbs had dulled. This was draining him, too fast for him to be able to take them both. He retreated into the feeble safety of the service rooms behind him while the demon threaded its shadow-form back together, trusting the tangle of walls and smoke to give him a measure of cover. The flow of smoke had faded to a shiver and with a thought he silenced the runes, conserving all he could as he tried to recover his strength.
‘Clever, tattooist,’ called the Benthic Knight from behind the dark veil, ‘but how long can you keep that up?’
‘Enough to take a limb or two,’ Enchei replied. He tugged a sliver of metal from his collar and jammed it into a wooden pillar. When he spoke again it would echo his voice around the near-collapsing palazzo – another precious moment of distraction, perhaps. ‘How’s the arm?’
‘Healing,’ she said baldly.
The words made Enchei scowl. He’d heard Leviathans could manage something far in excess of his own magic’s battlefield patching, but this was the first time he’d fought one.
Your flesh can heal,
he thought savagely,
but flesh’s easily broken once the shell’s cracked. I’ve got my own tricks to play and you didn’t see me play that hand.
‘You see you cannot win, don’t you? You don’t have the strength, not to take both of us.’
A small voice at the back of his mind cried desperation, but Enchei knew the Leviathan was right. He was burning through his magic far faster than she was. Most likely he’d manage the Terim, given the state of its vessel, but he’d have nothing at all left for her. Injured arm or not, she had her ghosts and more strength than him in reserve.
‘Will you consider my offer again?’
‘Offers from a woman whose name I don’t even know?’ Enchei replied, hearing the whispers of his voice reverberate around the outer part of the palazzo. ‘What would the wife say?’
There came a sound akin to amusement, but from a throat unsuited to it.
‘My name is Priest,’ she said, her soft footsteps almost masked by the rumbling growls of the Terim that echoed from the roof. ‘Come forward and you will survive. That is the only way. My wards are strong enough to keep your friends out long after your strength has failed you.’
‘What do you think my answer’s going to be? I killed a god, remember? I squeezed the life out of it with these two hands.’
‘And I look forward to seeing that memory,’ Priest said, ‘as I tear it from your mind.’
‘Enay, Maiss!’
Narin straightened as Kesh spoke, needing a hand from her to steady him. At his feet, Irato lay slumped against the outer wall – limp as a sack of potatoes, propped where they’d dragged him and unaware of what was going on around him.
He’d not wanted to touch the man at first. Some voice of caution had stayed his hand, the scene so reminiscent of when he’d first met Irato on the streets of Dragon District. When Kesh had tried to rouse him the former goshe had toppled backwards and stared unseeing up at the tattered shroud of the sky. Only the sight of Irato looking up at the stars, twitching and blinking like a man stunned, had stirred Narin to movement.
This time there was no god to give him orders, only a man who was his friend lying in need. They had dragged him from the palazzo, but got no sense out of him. The goshe’s powerful hands tightened around Narin’s as they hauled him back, but he had looked straight through Kesh when she’d spoken to him. Irato continued to mutter under his breath, short and urgent sounds, but neither Narin nor Kesh could make sense of it.
Narin stumbled forward as the two young Ghosts rounded the palazzo towards them. Myken followed a few paces behind, musket level and ready. Both of Enchei’s daughters were injured, Maiss blackened and bleeding from half a dozen wounds.
Kesh gasped at the state of the two House Ghost women. ‘What happened?’
‘The renegade,’ Enay growled.
‘Is he dead?’
‘And then some.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s no way in round the back. They’ve set some sort of defences that’re keeping us out.’
‘The Dragon’s Breath?’
‘Might cut through the wall given time, assuming we don’t exhaust its power. They’ve got magic protecting the walls; this place has been prepared as a trap for Enchei. Some sort of ghosts or demons are patrolling the upper floors – we put in a window, but anyone climbing up there’s getting their throat ripped out.’
They all turned towards the house as more sounds of chaos came from within; splintering wood, cracking stone and furious roars – but all blunted by either the stone structure or the magic protecting it.
‘Well, we can’t just stand here,’ Kesh snapped. ‘So find an answer, one of you!’
‘Now’s not the time to be picking a fight with me,’ Enay said in a quiet, dangerous voice. ‘I’m not done killing tonight.’
Maiss put a hand on her sister’s arm, though her face was scarcely less thunderous. ‘The lance is likely to set the place alight before it cuts an escape route. We need a way to help Father stay alive in there.’
‘What, then?’ Kesh said. ‘Throw that lance through the window you broke? Do you have any other weapons?’
The sisters looked at each other. ‘Uncle?’ Maiss asked softly.
Enay shook her head. ‘Won’t get here in time.’ The young woman winced at her wounds and cast around as she thought, teeth grinding in frustration.
‘Who?’ Narin demanded.
‘Best you don’t know,’ Enay snapped. ‘Safer for you, that’s for sure.’
‘What about the Gods?’ Kesh said, more in hope than anything else. ‘How is it they’re not interested in the Imperial City any more? Lord Shield might not be in Ascendancy at this time of year, but his stars still pass over and I doubt he’s paid us no mind since the summer. He traced Narin for us, for pity’s sake!’
‘Oh, I’m sure they’re watching,’ Enay growled. ‘They like to watch more’n get involved, though. Especially when the Astaren are part of things, so I’ve heard – they’ll keep clear and watch only. Your goshe conspiracy was one thing, that’s entertainment and possible profit for them. They meddle in the games of nations, though, and they’re taking sides all of a sudden. That gets more serious, that gets more dangerous for all involved.’
Narin shook his head. ‘She’s right. Lord Shield or any of the others aren’t going to help us here.’ He paused and looked to his right.
‘The gate,’ he said and turned ponderously, his whole arm now numb and stiff.
The dried blood on his clothes was crisp in the cold night air, black in the starlight. He and Kesh had between them managed to rig some sort of sling to cradle his damaged limb, but the dull throb of pain was eating its way through his shoulder.
They dragged the gate open to reveal a ragged column of figures hurrying towards them. Rhe led a depleted-looking group of Lawbringers and Investigators, while Prince Kashte and his gold-scarfed relations trotted alongside them. Narin wasn’t sure of their numbers, but they seemed to have a fair few more than the Lawbringers now.
‘He needs help,’ Narin said, pointing towards the palazzo. ‘Enchei got dragged in and the doors have some sort of protective warding.’