The Destroyer’s expression darkened in anger. She lifted a hand toward the Saint, who had found a nearby well and was now hauling herself over its edge, likely in an attempt to escape through the underground aqueduct that fed it.
She wouldn’t escape. The Destroyer would stop her. And then she would kill her, slowly and painfully, her normal businesslike ruthlessness made outright cruel by the attempt on her life. Tal would hear the assassin’s oddly familiar voice—perhaps she was someone from his home village in the mountain ward—scream again and again.
Rational thought left him, replaced momentarily by an instinct he couldn’t deny any more than he could deny his metal-sworn oath. He dropped his swords. He leapt forward. He grabbed the Destroyer’s uplifted hand in both of his. The flame was just starting to erupt from her palm, and instead of lashing out at the Saint across the street, it cracked into his own palm like a barbed whip. Agony arced through him. He gasped beneath the twisting weight of it and then locked his jaw, trying desperately not to scream.
The Destroyer’s head snapped toward him, her eyes wide with shock. He hadn’t tried to step between her and her victims since those first few excruciating weeks. Her startlement took her focus away from maintaining the fire in her hand and the flame snuffed out. The two of them stood there for a second longer, staring at each other over their interlocked hands, until the empress stepped around her sister and slapped Tal hard across the face.
His head snapped sideways with the force of the blow, making him lose his grip on the Destroyer. He staggered to one knee. The empress, like most Smiths, was much stronger than she looked.
“You should’ve made him swear to respect you as well as protect you,” Sarai said, disapproval sharp in her tone. “How dare he touch you without your permission?”
Tal stayed on the ground for a moment. He looked at the back of his left hand, the one that he’d used to snuff out the flame. No silvery blood dripped from it. The injury must’ve been instantly cauterized. He could hardly fathom what he’d done, what a massive risk he’d taken, unless he thought that perhaps deep down he’d wanted to finally be discovered as a silver Smith and executed. That, at least, would be one way out of his oath.
He turned his hand over, but he couldn’t bear to look at his palm and averted his eyes at the last moment. When he looked away, though, his gaze landed on the Destroyer instead.
She was staring at him. Her hand was still raised as it had been a moment ago, her long, delicate fingers curved slightly, like a pianist who’d been about to play a familiar melody. It was several long heartbeats before she lowered her arm. He couldn’t tell what emotion was flickering in her eyes. Usually he was good at reading her—he had to be—but now her expression was like a candle guttering in the wind, shifting too quickly between rage, shock, and something strange and wild that he couldn’t quite name.
Grasping the railing with his good hand, he climbed slowly to his feet. He cradled his burned hand against his body. He could feel his oath winding through him, tugging him toward the well, toward the threat against the Destroyer. He’d kept the Saint from being tortured to death, but now he would have to hunt her down and kill her himself.
He swallowed and finally managed to pull his gaze away from the Destroyer’s. As if that connection had been the one thing keeping his pain at bay, the agony rushed in all at once, and he bowed over his hand with a long, hissing exhale.
He would not scream. Not in front of these two.
“You will go kill the assassin yourself,” the Destroyer said at last, her voice as unreadable as her expression. Her words were half a question, half a flat order.
Unable to speak without crying out, he nodded.
A rustle of fabric. A shimmer of something coppery and gleaming, stopped up in a small bottle. Tal lifted his head to see the Destroyer holding out both her hands toward him. One held the bottle, and the other was empty, waiting.
Sarai clucked her tongue. “You’re going to use your personal healing tincture on him? You’re going soft.”
The Destroyer quirked one eyebrow. “No one has ever accused me of softness.”
Sarai shrugged her shoulders, as if to say, true enough.
The Destroyer inclined her head at Tal, still waiting. He eyed the vial in her hand. It was a general-use healing tincture, which every Smith carried so they could heal their injuries quickly enough to avoid the risk of the rust phage, an infection that could kill those with metal in their blood. He didn’t know why she would offer it to him. He’d been injured in her service before, and had never merited such treatment in the past.
But there didn’t seem to be a good enough reason to turn the medicine away, so he forced himself to hold his injured hand out. It shook when he laid it in hers. She pulled his fingers open—he couldn’t stop a short cry of pain then—and poured half of the little bottle over the injury on his palm. The pain instantly abated, his charred flesh flaking away, new pink skin growing rapidly beneath it.
The Destroyer re-stoppered the bottle. “I can get more from Albinus,” she said to her sister, using the name of the Lord of Copper, who was also their cousin. “Meanwhile, Tal can’t hunt down an assassin with only one hand.”
“You’ll come inside, then?” Sarai asked. “To your treatment?”
The Destroyer tucked the bottle away in the pocket of her dress. “After a proper breakfast, yes.” Without looking at Tal again, she turned and gracefully climbed the stairs back into the train. Within the bronze monstrosity, which was Smithed for protection as
