From the look on the guard’s face, Clara was fairly sure anyone beside the lady of the household would have already been knocked to the ground and reinforcements shouted for. Instead, the man turned to knock on the oaken door and Vincen Coe stepped up behind him, wrapping an arm across the guard’s neck and lifting him. The man choked and kicked, his hand clawing at Vincen’s arm. Clara closed her eyes, and the sounds alone were worse than the sight. After entirely too long, the guard went slack. Vincen lowered the body to the floor and stood with the guard’s drawn sword in his hand. Phelia drew a key from her sleeve, fitted it to the lock, and a moment later they were in Feldin Maas’s private study.
Vincen brought a candle in from the hallway, and by its light he found and lit the lamps. The room slowly grew lighter, taken by a dark, sullen sort of dawn. Shelves of dark wood and a thin writing desk with a brass inkwell and a white fluff of a feather quill. It was a larger space than Clara had expected. There were no windows, and a lattice of dark and light against one wall led her to think the room had once been used to store bottles. Phelia walked to the shelves like she was walking in her sleep. From amid the clutter of scrolls and codices, she took a simple wooden box, its top fastened with a hook and hinged with leather. She held it out to Geder Palliako.
“They’re ciphered,” she said. “I don’t know the code.”
Geder took the box, grinning like a boy with an unexpected present. As soon as it left her hand, Phelia closed in on herself, as if her bones had gone soft and smaller.
“Thank you, dear,” Clara said. “It was the only way. You know it was the only way.”
Her shrug was painful to watch.
“I don’t know how it came this far,” she said. “I truly don’t. If I could have-”
The roar was inhuman. Anger and wildfire and murder made sound. Clara screamed even before she knew what it was.
“What in hell is this?”
Feldin Maas stood in the doorway, a bare blade in his hand. His face was flushed almost purple with rage. Two more men stood behind him, blocked from entering. If he closes that door, Clara thought, we’re trapped. And if we’re trapped, we’re dead.
“No, Feldin,” Phelia said, walking forward. “It’s the right thing. It’s what we have to do. Lord Palliako’s promised mercy. He knew everything anyway.”
“You brought them here? You betrayed me?”
“I-”
Maas’s sword reached out swift and sudden as a lightning strike. Clara, behind her cousin, didn’t see the blade strike home, but she heard it. She saw the horrible play over Feldin Maas’s face: surprise, horror, grief, rage. Even before the blood, Clara knew the woman was dead.
Vincen Coe boiled past her, shouting and swinging his stolen blade like a scythe in a meadow. Maas fell back into the hallway from the sheer animal force of the attack. For a moment, the doorway was clear. Geder Palliako stood over the fallen woman, his jaw slack and his face pale. Clara pushed him, moving him toward the door.
“Go!” she shouted. “Before they seal us in!”
Geder and the priest hurried out. The sound of blade against blade almost made Clara pause. I’ll surrender, she thought. They wouldn’t harm a woman. It was an idiot’s thought. A reflex. Against all instinct, she ran out toward the fighting.
If the corridor had been wider, Feldin and his two guards would already have gotten around Vincen and cut him down. Instead, the huntsman swung hard and fast, his blade filling the space, holding them at bay. Sweat was pouring down his face, and his breath was fast. Feldin waited with a duelist’s eyes, looking for an opportunity.
“Run!” Vincen shouted. “I’ll win you what time I can!”
Geder Palliako needed no more urging. He turned, sprinting down the hall toward the staircase and double doors. She caught a glimpse of the wooden box still in his hand. She took four steps after him, but turned back. The priest moved just behind her, retreating from the fight, but not fleeing. Vincen’s shoulders worked like a laborer’s.
“Oh,” she heard herself say. “Oh, not this. Not this.”
Feldin’s blade swung high and hard, batting Vincen’s swing aside. The guard to Feldin’s left thrust past him, and Vincen grunted, leaping back. There was blood on the guard’s blade. Vincen’s blood, spilling on the floor.
“You can’t win,” the priest said, his voice loud and throbbing. Clara looked up at him, tears in her eyes, but he smiled and shook his huge head. “Lord Maas, listen to my voice. Listen to me. You cannot win.”
“I will see your guts,” Maas shouted.
“You won’t. Everything you love is already gone. Everything you hoped for is already lost. You can’t win. The fight is over. You’ve lost everything already. You have no reason to fight.”
Feldin surged forward, but even Clara could see the change in his stance. His swing was more tentative, his weight on his back foot, as if reluctant to engage the fight he had just been winning. Vincen drew back, limping badly. His leathers were red and wet. Feldin didn’t step forward.
“You saw her die, Lord Maas,” the priest said. “You saw her fall. She has gone, and you can’t bring her back. Listen to my voice. Listen to me. The fight’s lost. Nothing you can do here matters. You can feel that. That thickness in your throat. You feel it. You know what it means. You cannot win. You cannot win. You cannot win.”
One of the guards moved forward, his blade before him, but his gaze kept cutting back to Feldin. Feldin, whose eyes were caught on nothing. Vincen started to close with the man, but Clara rushed forward, put her hand on his arm, pulled him back.
“You can feel the despair in your belly, can’t you? You feel it,” the priest said. His voice was sorrowful, as if he regretted every word. Each syllable throbbed and echoed within itself. “You feel it in your heart. You’re drowning in it, and it will never end. There is no hope. Not now. Not ever. You cannot win, Lord Maas. You cannot win. There is nothing for you. You’ve lost it all, and you know it.”
“Lord Maas?” his guard said.
The point of Feldin’s blade lowered to the floor like he was drawing a vertical line in the empty air. In the candlelight, it was hard to see, but she thought there were tears on his mask-empty face. The guards looked at each other, confused and unnerved. Feldin dropped his sword to the ground, turned, and walked away down the corridor. Clara trembled. The huge priest put one hand on her shoulder, one on Vincen Coe’s.
“We should leave before he changes his opinion,” the priest said.
They backed down the hallway, leaving a track of blood. The guards took a few uncertain steps toward them, then back toward their retreating lord. They reminded Clara of nothing more than hunting dogs given two conflicting commands. When they reached the double doors, Vincen stumbled. The priest lifted him up, slinging him over a shoulder. It took them minutes to find a door that led out, what seemed half the night to negotiate the darkened gardens and reach the edge of Maas’s estate. A thick hedge marked the border, and the priest knelt by it, rolling Vincen Coe’s body to the ground. There were voices in the night. Shouting and calling. Searching, Clara thought, for them.
“Under here,” he said. “Watch over him. I’ll bring a cart.”
Clara knelt, pushing herself in through the twigs and leaves. The hedge had little space beneath it, but there was some. Vincen Coe dragged himself in after her, digging his elbows into the litter of dead leaves and old dirt. His face was ashen, and everything from his belly down was wet and slick. In the darkness, the blood wasn’t red, but black. She pulled him in close to her as best she could without proper leverage. She had the sudden visceral memory of being thirteen, hiding in her father’s gardens while one of her uncles dashed about pretending he didn’t know where she was. She shook her head. The memory was too innocent for the moment.
Vincen rolled onto his back with a groan.
“How bad is it?” she whispered.
“Unpleasant,” Vincen said.
“If Maas uses his dogs, we’re as good as found.”
Vincen shook his head, the leaves under him making the softest crackling sound.
“By now, I’m sure everything on the estate stinks of me,” he said. “Take them till morning to find which blood’s freshest.”
“Still feeling well enough to joke, I see.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Clara struggled to rise, squinting through the leaves. There was more shouting now. And, unless she was
