hand battle.
Kathryn…
A final wrench of shadows and the outcome became clear. Rising to his feet, Darjon ser Hightower clutched a fistful of Kathryn’s hair. He held her at his knees, head bent back, face bared. His sword lay at her throat.
“Move and she dies,” Darjon yelled to Tylar.
Behind the bastard, the door to the common room shook with pounding. But it was barred. There would be no rescue. Tylar stared at Kathryn. Her lower lip had been split. Blood ran from both nostrils. Still, a fierceness met his gaze. Don’t give in, she seemed to will him.
“What do you want?” Tylar asked.
“It was lucky you cracked that window. That sudden gust and bobble of the flippercraft saved my life. Your old witch here proved more skilled with a sword than I expected. But she’s not as skilled with a fist, alas. Easy to catch off guard.” He tightened his grip, his blade digging into her neck. Blood dribbled. “Now I want you to step over to that rail and fling yourself through that broken window. Do that and this sell-wench will live.”
“Why?” Tylar asked, needing time to think. “Whose justice do you serve?”
“My own,” Darjon snapped back.
Tylar shook his head. “To what end, then?”
A new fire flamed up in the man’s eyes, sensing he had the upper hand. He sneered, circling more slowly. “For too long, man has been subservient to the Hundred, but a new order rises, a new day. Power shall be returned to the people, to mankind! No longer will we be the playthings, the raw clay, of the gods. The Cabal will set us free. What was settled, will be unsettled. What was stolen, will be returned. What ended so long ago, starts anew.”
Tylar heard the cadence of fervor behind his words. “And the death of Meeryn?” he pressed, buying time.
“The first to fall. But she will not be the last! At long last, the War of the Gods is upon us.”
“And I’m to be the goat for this first kill. If you’re so proud of the death done in the Summering Isles, then why doesn’t the Cabal take credit for it?”
Darjon’s eyes narrowed, irritated. “The time is not yet right. Meeryn discovered the Cabal too soon. She had to be stopped. The naethryn assassin was called forth by one loyal to our cause. Not all gods wish to rule mankind. Some wish for our freedom. We work together-god and man-to free us both.”
Tylar recognized madness when it was bared so plainly.
Pounding continued behind them. The characteristic chop of an ax echoed. Could Tylar stall Darjon enough for the others to break through?
“No more talk,” Darjon said, as if reading his thoughts. “You have until the count of ten to hurl yourself over the railing, or I’ll kill this woman.”
“You made one mistake, Darjon,” Tylar said coldly.
“And what’s that?” he said with a sneer.
“You assumed I still have a fondness for this woman.”
The satisfied sneer faltered.
“This is the woman who damned me with her own testimony,” Tylar said, putting steel into his voice. “She broke her marital vow to me. She swore against me. Upon her words, I was broken on the wheel and sent into the slave circuses. She means nothing to me.”
“You lie.”
“Words are breath,” Tylar conceded. “But actions are flesh.” He turned the dagger in his hand and threw it with all the force in his arm.
Darjon shielded himself with a ward of shadowcloak, but the knight had not been Tylar’s intended target. The blade struck Kathryn in the hollow of her exposed throat, burying itself to the hilt. A killing strike.
The force of the blow threw her back. Darjon held her up by a fistful of hair. Kathryn’s eyes were wide with pain and shock. She gasped like a fish flopping on the bottom of a boat, soundless, yet agonized.
Darjon dropped her with disgust.
Tylar stood. He sidestepped to the first knight he had dispatched and collected the man’s abandoned sword.
Darjon billowed out his cloak, folding darkness into shield, drawing power and speed.
Tylar widened his stance. Blood flowed from the two impaled bolts. He tasted and smelled it with every agonized breath. He was no match for Darjon. Still, he lifted his sword.
“Let’s end this.”
Dart stepped from the carriage. Laurelle followed. Both girls kept behind Yaellin. He paid the coachman and spoke in low tones, menace and warning inflecting his quiet words. The man nodded and remounted his carriage seat. As the horses set off down the street, Yaellin’s cloak soaked up the shadows in the alleyway, stirring the darkness like water.
“Will he tell anyone about us?” Laurelle asked.
“Gold will quiet a tongue for only so long,” Yaellin said. “And fear of reprisal for aiding us may buy us another day. But I expect the bounty on the three of us will be high. The lure will draw him out. Before that happens, we must clear the upper city.”
Dart, like the others, had noted the number of castillion guards out on the street, easy to spot in their gold- and-crimson livery. They were knocking on doors and questioning every wagon. Their own carriage had taken this alley to avoid a patrol. Chrism would soon have every garrison alerted from one end of Chrismferry to the other.
“What now?” she asked. Her eyes stared at the two towers of the Conclave. Yaellin had them dropped off several streets from its doors.
“We go on foot. We move swiftly. We stick to shadows.”
Yaellin drew them across the street and down an alley. Dart ran to keep up. She still ached deep in her belly, her head raced with a thousand questions, and her heart pounded in terror and worry. She wanted to lie down, cover her face, and cry. But Yaellin’s earlier words kept her moving.
And you, little Dart, may be the key all seek.
She prayed it wasn’t so.
And what of Pupp? Where was he? He must be terrified, all alone. Was he suffering from their separation, too? Love for him welled through her, gave her some strength to continue running. The three of them, while heading toward the Conclave, were also moving in the direction of the walled Eldergarden. Each step helped steady her. She would find Pupp. He had protected her at her most dire moment. She could do no less for him, regardless of the risk.
They fled down another street, staying on the shadowed side. Gates to the Conclave lay around the next corner and down a block. “Not much farther,” Yaellin promised them.
The pound of boot steps on cobbles sounded from ahead. The churlish voice of a captain reached them. “Check every doorway, every home, every stall.”
Yaellin searched around them. The street offered no hiding place. “Back,” he said with hushed urgency.
Dart turned around. The closest alley lay too far away. They’d never escape in time.
“Hurry,” Yaellin urged.
“No,” Laurelle said. “This way.”
She ran ahead, toward the nearby corner, toward the approaching guards. Dart hesitated, then raced after Laurelle. She had lost one friend this morning. She’d not lose another.
Yaellin followed with a grumble.
Laurelle reached a shop at the corner and ducked inside. Dart knew the establishment. A wooden rolling pin hung above the lintel. It was Havershym’s Bakery and Sweets. Girls and boys had been coming here for generations to buy or pinch bits of brittlesyrup, gingersnaps, or honeycakes. Laurelle was seldom without a bag of sweets from the shop, passing them out to her dearest friends.
Dart had never been the recipient of such largesse. In fact, she had been in the shop only once, when she was awarded two brass pinches for helping Mistress Grannice spin some raw wool. She had bought four pieces of karamellow, doling them out as a treat to herself once a month.
The brass bell rang as they rushed inside. The smell of sugar and rising bread filled their noses. The heat from the fired ovens in the back room warmed the chill of the streets off them.
