Kathryn watched him depart, disappearing down the dark throat. She flashed back to the docks below Tashijan, spying upon Tylar in chains, leaving her life, broken and stripped. Tears finally flowed. She turned away.
The Hands simply stared, eyes on fire.
Kathryn wanted to take a sword to each, to savage them completely. Her shoulders shook. Her fingers clenched on the hilt of her blade. But the folk here were not to blame. To put them to the blade would serve no end.
She stared at the others, her companions.
It was difficult to meet anyone’s eyes.
To do so was to read the hopelessness in each.
Kathryn fell to her knees on the stones. She covered her face, bowing her head to the floor. She had not allowed herself to break down. Not in front of Tylar. Pain wrenched through her. He had left her again, with nothing but her guilt. Her belly ached, remembering an old pain… and blood.
She hated him at that moment.
But as before, on her knees, she wanted only one thing.
Come back.
Tylar stalked down the stairs. The way was narrow. Only a few torches lit it. He kept his mind fixed to what he must face, but at the edges of his perception, he felt the shadow Graces flowing throughout his cloak.
As he swept past a torch, the power ebbed to the deepest folds, and as he descended into darkness again, it flushed anew. This tidal rhythm was as familiar as his own heartbeat… yet it was muffled. He was cut off from it fully. It felt more like memory than reality.
And in many ways, it was.
He descended swiftly, tasting the power, remembering a time when he wore such a cloak without ever feeling it. It was a second skin. But this was not his skin, he reminded himself.
It was Kathryn’s cloak.
She had worn this same cloth when she had sat and denied him in court. Expressed her doubts of him. But then again, how honest had he been with her? She had known nothing of his dealings with the Gray Traders.
At the time, he had been brash enough to believe he could slip between the black and the white. It had all started to raise funds for the orphanages of Akkabak Harbor, where he had grown up. He didn’t want others to face the same cold streets and rough peddling that he had. Few survived. And he’d still had contacts among the Traders from his own days among the alleys.
But slowly things changed. Coins began to find their way into his own pocket. A few at first, then a bit more. It seemed a minor thing, done for the greater good.
Tylar felt old bile rising. It was hard to recognize when gray darkened to black, when twilight became true night.
But it did.
Then there was Kathryn. They were to be one. Her light finally opened his eyes to the darkness. He tried to break away. But mistrust was the coin of the Gray Traders. Murders were laid at his doorstep.
Old anger flared. Old injustices.
If only he had never met her…
He closed his eyes, knowing it wasn’t fair. But the anger still burned, deeper than he cared to admit. And mixed amid it all was a new, rawer guilt. His child. Lost in blood and heart-break. How could she ever forgive him?
And somehow that guilt, that question, only fueled the anger inside him. His steps began to hurry.
He found the cloak suddenly cloying.
But at last, he reached the end of the stairs. There was nowhere else to run. He forced his feet to slow, his breathing to even.
He halted on the bottom step and took a deep breath.
It was time to stop running.
Stepping down, he moved to the door. It led to a small antechamber, the walls lined with benches and pillows. He inspected the room from the doorway, ready for another trap. It was empty. The far door was grander. According to Gerrod’s sketch, it opened to the main hall.
He approached the door, Rivenscryr in hand.
Thunder echoed.
He waited for it to pass, then leaned an ear to the door. He heard nothing, except for a rumble of rushing water under his feet. The Tigre River flowed under this bottommost level. It must be flood high by now.
Stepping back, he gripped the Godsword and reached to the latch with his other hand. He pulled the door open and flowed into the hall, touching the Grace in his cloak to hide his entry. He kept crouched and slid to the neighboring wall.
Tigre Hall spread before him, half in ruins.
He gaped at the destruction. The churn of water burbled louder, echoing up from ragged holes in the floor. It seemed the grand hall had not been spared when the flippercraft tore beneath the keep.
But that was not all the damage.
Torches lit the space sparingly, hanging from sconces, illuminating broken benches, tables, and splintered chairs. It looked as if some mad whirlwind had torn through the hall. The broken floor could not have done all this damage.
Then Tylar smelled it.
A residual odor of burned blood.
Here was where Chrism must have gathered his guard and underfolk, where the humanity was burned from them by corrupted Grace. The destruction was the aftermath of that foul birthing.
“Do not tarry at the door, Godslayer.”
The soft voice came from the far side of the room, where tables and chairs still stood upright. A raised dais was lit by two torches atop poles. They blazed merrily, brighter than those along the walls. Their flickering flames shone upon a row of nine chairs atop the dais. Four smaller seats flanked each side of a taller chair. It had been carved from myrrwood, gone black by age.
The throne of Chrism.
It was empty.
The figure rose from the steps of the dais. He had been righting an overturned pot that supported a dwarf sedge-wood tree. Its fronded crown shook slightly as the pot settled on the floor.
Lord Chrism stood back, staring at it, fists on his hips. Then he reached forward and touched the spindly trunk. The small buds, buried amid the leaves, opened, peeling back opalescent petals.
Satisfied, Chrism lifted his other arm and motioned Tylar to join him.
“This way, Godslayer.”
Chrism climbed the dais and dropped to his throne. He lounged comfortably and waited.
Tylar waded out of shadows and edged warily across the room. He skirted the edges of a hole. The rush of water below sounded like a heavy wind.
He glanced down.
Deeper in the water, a slight glow shone. Perhaps a glowpike working against the stream. Then it vanished, swept away.
Tylar cleared the ruined sections of the hall and continued forward. Behind the dais, another hole cracked the floor, spewing up a bit of spray that scintillated in the torchlight. It was too bright for such a dark moment.
Chrism’s eyes fixed on the Godsword as Tylar stepped forward. Tylar read the desire behind his dispassionate features.
The god waved to a chair by the sedge-wood tree.
Tylar remained standing.
Chrism sighed, a soft, pleasant sound. “I’ve called you down here to make you an offer, Tylar.”
Tylar winced at the god’s familiarity.
Chrism continued. “The Cabal could use someone of your… unique talents. It would be a shame to waste
