I hesitated, looked into his face, searching—for what, I didn’t know. Truth, perhaps. Or maybe some sign that he still cared for me. After all, my mother was gone now. Perhaps he had only befriended me to get to her.
“Explain,” I said.
“There is no time!” He glanced up the street as if expecting to see someone or something, but the street remained deserted. “My carriage will be here soon. Dress yourself, and be quick about it. We must be ready.”
“What does this have to do with the king? You said it involved him.”
“Yes, though he does not yet know it himself. But if you come with me now, I promise that the invasion of your world will be over within the week. I can say no more.”
And if he really knew something that could end our war with the hell-creatures, I owed it to King Elnar to listen. I had never known Dworkin to lie. For the sake of my oath to the king and Ilerium, for my childhood and all the kindness Dworkin had showered on my mother and me, I decided I would take him at his word… for now.
“Very well.” I handed him my sword and hurriedly began pulling on my pants.
He remained nervous and apprehensive, glancing up the street every few seconds. He had volunteered little information, I realized, but perhaps I could extract more with an indirect line of questioning.
“Where have you been all these years?” I asked. “I thought you were dead.”
“Traveling,” he said absently. “My… business took me far from here.”
“You could have sent messages.”
“You didn’t need them. I would have been a distraction for you. Had you known I was alive, you would have given up your commission and come looking for me.”
I pulled on my shirt and began lacing the front. “You don’t know that!”
“Of course I do. I know you, Obere, better than you know yourself.”
He shifted slightly, glancing again in the direction of the battlefield outside town. I paused, straining to hear, but even the distant scavenging dogs had grown silent. That seemed an ominous sign.
More slowly, Dworkin went on. “Friends have been sending me reports now and again of you and your career. From raw soldier to lieutenant in ten years is quite a remarkable feat. You have done your parents proud.”
“King Elnar rewards deeds more than accidents of birth.” I shrugged and began to link my shirt-cuffs. “Less than half his officers have noble bloodlines.”
“So I have heard.”
“And I owe much to your training.”
He nodded slightly. “You were an apt student. But don’t discount your own talents—you were born to greatness.”
As I buckled on my swordbelt, I found I began to share his apprehension. A strange, almost expectant hush had fallen over the street… over all of Kingstown. Not an insect chirped, not a bat winged overhead, not a single dog howled in the distance. An unpleasant tension hung over everything around us, like the calm before a storm.
“They are near, I think,” Dworkin said softly. “Even the animals sense it…”
“Who?”
“The enemy. Those you call hell-creatures.”
“You say it like they have some other name.”
“They do.” He looked at me and smiled. “But in this place, they are merely soldiers, like you or I.”
“Not like me! And when have you ever been a soldier?”
He chuckled, a strange gleam in his eye. “You have more in common with them than you realize. We both do.”
I gave a derisive snort, not enjoying the idea. That hell-creatures should be here in Kingstown, behind our lines, seemed unlikely. And yet Dworkin certainly appeared to know more about them than King Elnar’s own agents. Nobody on our side knew where they came from originally, or how many they numbered—they had swept down from the north a year ago in a vast horde, destroying villages, murdering men, women, and children alike by the thousands. King Elnar had marched his army against them at once and fought them to a standstill. But slowly, over the months, their numbers swelled and they advanced on us again and again, driving us ever back, until presently they controlled half of Ilerium.
How did Dworkin know so much, when our own agents knew so little? I found it disconcerting to say the least. And it raised more than a few danger flags in my mind.
I tried to take a mental step backward. It was a trick I had taught myself, to try to see more than what was readily apparent. Who was Dworkin, really? What business could possibly have taken him away in the midst of the Scarlet Plague, when every country in the world had shut its ports to our ships?
I suddenly realized then how little I actually knew about my “uncle.” When you are a child, you take adults for granted. Dworkin had been a part of my life for so long, I had never thought to question his origins or his business or even his phenomenal skill with a sword, for he had certainly been on par with any master I had trained with in the last decade.
As I leaned against Helda’s house and pulled on my boots, I studied him. His strange clothing, his long absence, his swordsmanship, and his ability to keep track of me… I could only reach one conclusion: he had to be a spy. But for whom?
At least he seemed to fear the hell-creatures. No man who has looked into their slitted red eyes, or fought against their wickedly barbed swords and fire-breathing horses, can come away unchanged.
I finally decided that he had to be working for one of the neighboring kingdoms. And they had good cause to fear—if the hell-creatures continued their advance, they would control all of Ilerium within the year, and then they would be free to attack Tyre or Alacia or any of the other Fifteen Kingdoms.
“Where is your carriage?” I asked, taking back my sword.
He looked to the right, down the street. “I hear it coming now.”
I loosened my blade in its scabbard and stood straighten. Clearly Dworkin had gone to a lot of trouble to track me down—I had made doubly sure nobody knew where I would be sleeping tonight, from King Elnar to my orderly. And clearly, from his unceremonious pounding on the door, Dworkin truly did fear for my life.
But why should
The clatter of iron-shod wheels on cobblestones slowly grew louder. Dworkin exhaled heavily and seemed to relax as an odd little carriage sped around the corner half a block away.
I gaped at it. It was shaped almost like a pumpkin, with smooth curved sides that might have been made of milky glass, and it glowed with an eerie phosphoric light, illuminating the whole street. Strangest of all, it had neither horses to pull it nor a driver to steer it, though it had an empty bench on top.
Magic.
I’d seen a few itinerant sorcerers visit King Elnar’s court over the years, but such were few and far between in this part of the world, and usually their magics were more flash and fancy: parlor tricks and elegant illusions to delight ladies after dinner. For Dworkin to have a sorcerer of considerable power at his disposal showed how important his mission here must be.
I’d had some little acquaintance with magic myself over the years. As a boy, I’d discovered I had the ability to change the features of my face when I concentrated on it, and I’d practiced secretly until I could make myself look like almost anyone I’d ever met. When they found out, both Dworkin and my mother had strongly discouraged this talent. And since such tricks are little use in combat, I’d barely even thought of it for years.
As the carriage neared, white lace curtains at the side windows fluttered briefly. I thought I glimpsed a woman’s pale face peering out at us, lips blood red and eyes dark. Could she be steering it from inside?
“Hurry,” Dworkin said urgently, taking my elbow and propelling me toward the carriage. I quickened my pace to keep up. “We must—”
At that second, the building behind us exploded. The force of it knocked me flat to the ground, and I
