room now. You’ll stay there while I discuss your future with my brothers. You may be retained here to work, or we may simply kill you. I understand that you chose to surrender to our people rather than try to fight them. That speaks well for you. Civilized people can be useful. Barbarian princesses cannot.”
A whirlwind of impulses and desires and red mists ran riot through her mind. Her hands wanted to kill this man, to tear down his temple brick by brick, to rip the head clean off Enzo’s killer, and to carry home the burning steel cage with her beloved’s soul inside it. But the sick gnawing in the pit of her stomach only wanted to run far, far away. And the cold splinter in the back of her mind was telling her that she was only one woman, alone, unarmed, unwanted, unloved, and soon to be unmissed by the world.
“I have a son.” Qhora wanted to say more, but she couldn’t imagine what maternal feeling or natural obligation this man might care about. Still she said, “He’s waiting for me. He’s only three months old. I can’t stay here.”
“If you truly valued him above all else, you wouldn’t have left him to come here. So don’t try my patience with your false sense of loyalty.”
“I was wrong.” The word left an aching knot in her throat. Wrong.
“Oh?”
“Wrong to come here. I came because that’s what I know. When attacked, I attack in kind. Blood cries out for blood. Let no trespass go unpunished. Absolute war. Death without mercy. That’s what kept me alive through… everything. Being stronger, faster, crueler. But it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. It was only a way to survive. To keep my blood on the inside.”
“There’s nothing shameful about survival,” Khai said. “Few scholars study the philosophies, passions, and beliefs of failed nations. After all, they’re dead. What can they possibly offer the living? To simply survive in this world at all is to understand a great deal about the human body, mind, and society.”
Qhora frowned. She was certain there was something wrong in what he had just said, but she didn’t care to dwell on it. “I just meant that if I could go back to that night when my husband died, I wouldn’t have left my son to find the killer. I would have stayed at home and taken care of my boy, and let others find justice for us. I can’t save Enzo’s life. I can’t even save his soul, can I?”
“No. You can’t free a soul from a seireiken,” Khai said. “But you can see them and hear them, for whatever that is worth. Would you want to see your dead husband again?”
“Of course!”
“And a year from now? Ten years? Twenty?” The older man glanced back over his shoulder at her. “You’re a young woman with a child to raise. Surely your fortunes would be better served if you were to find a new husband to provide for you. And besides that, surely you yourself would want to find a new companion for the many long years of your life still ahead of you. Would you truly want your dead husband’s ghost trapped in your home with you, watching you live your life with another man? Or would you forego a lifetime of love and security to keep a dead man’s soul in the palm of your hand? Would you deny your son a new father, a living father, just so you can hear that same voice from beyond the grave telling you that you are beautiful and that he loves you?”
Qhora rubbed her aching forehead. “Wouldn’t you want to keep the souls of your loved ones close to you?”
Khai stopped and turned. He touched the sword at his side. “I keep the souls of countless thousands of men and women close to me. I’ve known very few of them in life. I’ve known a few more of them in death. I’ve never loved any of them, and they have never brought me any measure of joy or even satisfaction. They are less than slaves. Only tools, nothing more. But to your question, no. If I had a wife or a child die, I would not wish to have them near me. Children are meant to leave the nest. And everyone dies, sooner or later. It is the measure of a person how they cope with loss. The dead must be let go for the living to truly carry on living.”
“And yet you keep that sword, and you keep filling it with the souls of the dead. You don’t let them go, do you?”
“No. I don’t.” He continued down the hall.
Either he’s insane or he’s so detached from normal life that he might as well be crazy. Even if he doesn’t kill me today, he’ll kill me one day all the same. One more slave to serve his twisted ambitions.
They were reaching the end of a corridor. Ahead were two doors on the left but on the right was an opening where she saw a spiraling iron stair rising up and plummeting down into the darkness. The old man passed the stair and approached the last door. “Here we are.”
Qhora leapt over the iron railing and crashed down on the rattling stairs. As she bolted forward and down, she heard the crackling hiss of the man’s drawn seireiken scorching the air and a blinding, colorless light filled the stairwell, drawing nightmare shadows around her body and down the steps.
“Stop!” The man’s voice boomed down the stairwell.
Qhora spun and looked up through the iron rails and steps. The light of the sword was blinding, obliterating all details of the man holding it.
“Come back here, young lady.”
She shifted down a few more steps, moving crablike to keep her eyes on the sword.
“I need only drop the seireiken and it will burn straight through those iron stairs,” Khai said wearily. You son will be orphaned long before the blade strikes the foundation at the bottom of the stairwell.”
“Somehow I doubt you would take the risk,” she said. “While I have no doubt the sword is up to the task, are you? What if you miss me? And what if I reach the sword before you do?”
He didn’t answer and she took the opportunity to slip down several more steps. She was at the next floor down. The hallway was empty.
But I want to keep going down.
She peered up at him. The sword was still hovering out over the stairwell, not pointed down, not walking down, not falling down.
Qhora ran.
She leapt down the tiny, curving, rattling iron steps two and three at a time, using the railings to hurl herself on and on, crashing around the never-ending bends of the spiraling staircase. She passed a second floor, and then a third. Over the clangor of her own feet on the stairs it was impossible to tell whether anyone was following her down the steps, but she didn’t dare stop now.
Faster, faster!
She crashed around a bend in the stair, her hip colliding sharply with the rail, but there wasn’t time for pain, there was only time to run and run faster. A face flashed by on the next floor, a young man wearing a sleepy-eyed look of surprise. She ran on, down and down, jumping and leaping and pulling herself down by the railings.
How far? How far down? How far up was I? Do I hide? Do I look for the man who killed Enzo now, or wait? How long can I dare to wait? An hour? A day?
She grimaced. There was a man just below her, slowly making his way up the steps. He looked up at her, a frown twisting his bearded cheeks as he said, “Excuse me.”
She shoved him aside and ran on. She wasn’t even running anymore. She had fallen into a pattern of leaping down a quarter turn of the spiral stair at a time, four or five steps at a time. Jump, crash. Jump, crash.
Damn me if I turn my ankle again now!
A warm yellow light filtered up through the gaps in the stairs below her and Qhora slowed down just a bit, stutter-stepping as she glanced up and down in search of pursuers.
Whatever that light is, it means people. Damn!
She hesitated just above the opening in the stairwell that led out onto the brightly lit landing. A man and woman were yelling. The crashing and scraping of swords. The clatter of wooden furniture overturning. A man laughing.
Wait, that voice, could it be…?
Qhora stepped out onto the landing and hurried to the closed door obscuring the noise and the yellow light under its sill. For several seconds she listened and caught her breath.
It is him!
Qhora threw the door open and saw the tall Italian dashing around the room, slashing at a one-eyed woman while a lean figure in black held a matte black revolver pointed at the ceiling. She shouted, “Salvator!”
The Italian barely spared her a glance. “Your timing is otherworldly, my dear.” He leaped from the top of a massive anvil, contorting his long, lithe form to avoid a slashing stiletto. He landed lightly and lunged at the one-
