Tal looked down at his hand. The tincture she’d used on him had flakes of Smithed copper—the metal of healing—in it. When he brushed away the bits of metal and charred skin, his palm looked good as new.
He can’t hunt down an assassin with only one hand.
Briefly, he allowed his eyes to slide shut in despair. He tilted his head to the sky. He didn’t pray, because he hadn’t prayed in over a year and refused to start up the useless practice again now, but he did allow himself a few heartbeats of peace. Of stillness, before he had to go kill another of the Destroyer’s enemies.
He could barely remember what it had been like for him before the oath. He couldn’t quite grasp the depths of his own naivety in swearing it. It felt as if an entirely separate person had presented himself on the palace’s great porch that day. The boy he’d been had trusted—impossibly, unfathomably—in a god who had promised to use him as an instrument of salvation for the whole empire. Instead, Tal had become an instrument of death to his own people, and to his own soul. He would never forgive his god. He would never forgive himself.
Tiny flakes of ash dusted onto his eyelashes like snow. The warmth of the still-burning train station brushed across one side of his face, while the cool of dawn feathered over the other. He inhaled. Exhaled.
And then he picked up his swords, leapt over the railing, and followed the Saint.
TAL MOVED THROUGH THE BRICKED-OVER AQUEDUCTS with a grim sense of purpose. He focused on where he put his feet—avoiding the puddles of stinking water, avoiding the loose rubble that might shift beneath his boots—so that his journey through this silent underworld wouldn’t be tracked by his prey. He’d been on the assassin’s trail for nearly half an hour now, a quiet chase that had led him through a maze of tunnels and sewers and half a dozen seeming dead ends. The Saint was good. But she wasn’t quite as good as Tal.
The spots of blood Tal had been following led through a shallow spot where brackish water pooled atop the bricks. Tal stepped around it, then knelt to examine a smudged print at its far edge. It was wet, less than a few minutes old, but it was smaller than the prints of the assassin. Which meant someone else was down here. Slowly, he turned his head.
Speckles of sunlight speared through the dark from the places in the tunnel’s ceiling where bricks were missing. The light was hazy and gray, filtered through the still-settling rubble of the city above, but it was enough to illuminate the shapes of the several dozen townspeople who were huddled in a side tunnel. Their clothing was smeared with soot, their faces gaunt with fear. They stood motionless like rabbits before a wolf.
The group stared at Tal. He stared back. A part of him, bone-deep and hidden, wanted to shrink away from the looks in their eyes. The only concession he could make to that part of himself was to glance back down at the puddle, bowing his head for the space of an exhale. It was meant to be a respite. Instead, he was faced with his own reflection.
A tumble of dark hair. Impassive green eyes. Lean muscles, dark clothes. A thin slant of lips—an expression that reminded him too much of the lady he defended. He looked away.
Then he stood and faced the group. He put a finger over his lips, signaling them to silence. Disbelieving hope flickered in their eyes. Not a single one of them moved or even breathed as he stepped further into the main tunnel, and further from them.
The Destroyer had ordered that any survivors be arrested. But he’d only sworn to protect her, two years and a lifetime ago—not to obey her.
A shadow rustled ahead of him. A gleam of steel flickered in one of the beams of ashy light, the only warning of an expertly-thrown dagger that was now spinning toward Tal’s chest. In an instant, Tal’s dual blades were in his hands, and he angled one outward even as he dove to the side. Clang. Metal struck on metal. The hilt of Tal’s left sword jerked painfully against his hand with the impact, but the dagger clattered harmlessly to the ground rather than spearing through his ribs. Picking it up and tucking it into his belt—because he knew better than to offer an opponent the chance to re-arm herself—Tal moved cautiously toward the shadow on the far side of the aqueduct.
“Damn,” said a weak female voice, again faintly familiar though he still couldn’t quite place it. “That was…my second favorite blade.”
Tal didn’t slow. He stepped over a smear of blood. It shone dully against the bricks and all over the assassin’s arm, which the girl was now cradling against her chest. The red-brown shade matched the blood that had begun to dry on the edge of one of Tal’s swords.
The girl shoved herself backwards, muffling a curse when the movement jostled her injury. He couldn’t see much more of her than her clothes, her skin—a few shades browner than Tal’s own—and her tightly-curled, dark hair. Her face was hidden beneath her mask of rough, unworked bronze. He didn’t ask who she was. It would only make this worse.
The assassin was panting now, trying to shove herself to her feet. “They said you were unstoppable,” she admitted. “I have to say, I didn’t believe it till now.”
“I’ll make it quick,” was all Tal said in response. It was the only thing he could offer her. His tone sounded empty, betraying not even a shred of the bitterness that ate away at him. Every time he had to hunt down another of the Destroyer’s enemies, every time he had to kill someone he would rather
