The Bailiff hopped backward out of the Corpses’ reach and directly into Kest’s line of fire.
She flung her chain weight out. The impact spun the Bailiff off his feet and sent his bowler hat tumbling across the grass.
Kest stood over him, just out of range of his musclebound Spirit arms. The weight zipped back into her cinnabar hand and morphed into a metal arrowhead. She aimed the point at his face.
“Give me the artifact,” she commanded him.
The Bailiff propped himself up on one wiry elbow and smoothed an oily tendril of black hair out of his face with webbed fingers. A dark lump was already rising on his jaw where he’d been hit.
“You didn’t give her my message, Smart Boy?” He tutted at me. “Not very friendly of you.” He held up the Heartblood Crown in one hand like he was admiring it. “You can’t have this here little bangle, Miss Metalhead, but don’t you fret. Your old pal the Bailiff brought you a present that’ll knock your socks off.”
He pulled a six-shooter out of his pocket and leveled it at her.
Kest stuck out her real hand. Hot Metal Spirit surged through her, making her skin glow faintly orange as she prepared to slag the bullet.
The Bailiff grinned like that was exactly what he’d been hoping she would do.
My spinal fluid turned to ice. “Kest, don’t!”
I poured everything I had into Ki-speed, but it was like one of those nightmares where you’re moving in super slow motion while everything else runs at top speed. I could see it all happening, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
The six-shooter barked.
A mist of black Selken blood exploded out the back of Kest’s hand and spattered across her face and shirt like motor oil. A little splashed back onto the Bailiff’s pistol and arm. More blood welled in rhythmic pumps from a perfect black circle in her chest. Liquid black, darker than the grave.
Heartblood.
The Bailiff tipped the pistol’s blood-splattered barrel back and blew away a wisp of gun smoke.
Kest’s knees buckled, and she sat down hard in the grass, frowning down at her destroyed hand. Her eye lace shifted from thick to thin, and I could read the confusion on her face. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. The bullet should’ve melted harmlessly in her fist like every other one.
I finally made it to her side, skidding on my knees in the grass.
Behind me, Rali roared. His walking stick clacked and thunked as he unleashed on the Jianjiao reinforcements.
Warcry streaked past me toward the Bailiff.
Kest looked at me. Her mouth opened, but nothing came out.
“Glass composite bullet,” the Bailiff said, and when I looked up, he was already back on his feet, carelessly avoiding Warcry’s frenzied attacks. “I didn’t even know if that little puppy would work or blow up in my hand, but looks like it did the job, don’t it? I got the idea from our mutual acquaintance, a certain Nameless Ylef who seems to have up and vanished from the surface of Van Diemann.” The Bailiff shot me a knowing smirk. “Sure was useful while he lasted, though, wasn’t he?”
Kest’s cinnabar hand clutched my forearm weakly, then the rolling silver lost its shape and sloughed off her stump, splashing onto her skirt in a useless shining puddle. I put my arms around her, barely touching her, afraid anything I did would hurt her or make things worse. She fell against my chest, forehead hitting my collarbone too hard.
No one would fall like that. Not if they were still—
The words dead weight started looping in my brain.
“No!” Rali wrenched his twin out of my arms. “You’re all right, Kest.” He pressed a pudgy hand flat over the bloody bullet wound and shut his eyes. “Come on. Come on!”
It took me a second to realize he wasn’t just trying to hold her blood in, he was trying to heal her. He was the Warm Heart cultivator, the only guy on our side with restoration abilities. But it wouldn’t work. Rali didn’t have a functioning Spirit sea. Kest didn’t even have a script tattoo. The Eight-Legged Dragons couldn’t give her theirs while she was spying on the Technols, and the Technols hadn’t accepted her as a full member yet, so she didn’t have theirs, either.
Her life was pouring out of her chest, and there was nothing any of us could do.
The Healing and Herbs shed in the Technol camp. Someone there could surely do something for Kest. We just had to keep her alive long enough to get her to a functioning healer.
I shoved Rali’s hand aside and forced a tsunami of Miasma down through my arms, pressing both my hands to the bullet hole, reasoning that if the freeze stopped my bleeding when I needed it to, it could be used to stop Kest’s.
Necrotizing frost crackled along the surface of my skin, killing the nerves and burning the skin black.
But only my skin. It didn’t extend past my fingertips. It didn’t touch her.
Her blood slowed to a stop, but not because of anything we had done. A long exhale rattled out of Kest’s lungs, so quiet I shouldn’t have been able to hear it over Rali moaning no and Warcry fighting the Bailiff and remaining Jianjiao on his own and the battle raging in the Technol camp. But everything in the field seemed to stop and wait for her to finish.
The flickering blue-white flame at the base of Kest’s skull disappeared from Dead Reckoning. It didn’t gutter like when I smothered someone’s life point. One second it was there, the next, it was just gone.
She was dead.
The rocks and grass and her face dimmed until I could hardly see any of my surroundings anymore. Out of nowhere, two paths stretched out before me like I’d just come around a curve to find a fork in the road. The right-hand path was so bright and
