Have you ever wondered where things went wrong?
Not just in general, but with people. Specific people. Have you ever had someone who you go back through every moment with them and run through it, breath by breath, wondering if you could pick out the exact point where everything got ruined? Wondering if maybe you could fix that moment and, in doing so, fix everything?
I do that sometimes.
Maybe more than sometimes, if I’m honest.
I think back to the times I said something I didn’t mean—or something I did mean, but wished I meant it in a better way. I think back to the times I let things go that I shouldn’t have, the things I buried down deep that I didn’t want to. And I think back to them and their smiles and their eyes and their lying and their problems and the things I did to them and the things they did to me and…
Yeah.
It gets difficult to keep track of it all. Too difficult, honestly. The times that hurt get mixed up with the times that felt so good. It’s hard to pry apart the times he roared at me with the times he held me gently after I’d seen something I hadn’t wanted to and needed it. It’s hard to separate the times where he said the things he couldn’t take back from the times where he said exactly what I needed to hear without knowing it. The jokes he made get tangled up with the things he did with the way we fought with the love we made and so on and so on and…
Until you just get angry, I guess.
You get angry about the things that happened. You get angry about the things you can’t have anymore. You get angry about how good it all felt and how bad it all ended. And then you just stop thinking about it because you feel your chest on fire and your breath stopped short like you’re about to get your throat ripped out.
And that’s all you feel. Until you can’t remember feeling any other way.
Have you ever had someone like that?
Most of us do. That’s just what happens. Unlucky. But most people are unlucky.
If you’re truly lucky, you don’t have anyone like that.
And if you have several someones like that—well, my condolences.
I had that. There, in that alley in Toadback. My arm on that someone’s throat, my gun in his face, tears in my eyes. And I had that problem. When I looked into those eyes, the big dark ones that I used to love seeing in the morning, I went through it again. All of it. Every moment. Every breath. Trying to find out where it went wrong. Trying to find a reason not to pull the trigger right then and there.
I saw the first night we met, when my life in the Imperial army stopped being so lonely.
I felt the heat in my face from the first time I ever cussed him out, the rush of shame that followed saying it.
I heard the first time I’d made him laugh—really laugh, not the dignified airy noise he made when he was amused, but the ugly cackle he made when he was truly happy.
I remembered the cold wind hitting hot blood—my blood—the night I’d lost him, my powers, and the sky.
The night his blade had given me my deepest scar.
And I couldn’t find a reason not to. A reason not to press my arm tighter against his throat. A reason not to let my finger curl around the trigger a little tighter. If he had just helped me, I didn’t care. If I died because of killing him, I didn’t care. It felt like I couldn’t stop myself.
… And I couldn’t make myself.
I didn’t know why, then. Why I felt so conflicted. I still don’t know, if I’m honest.
Though, if I had to guess…
“Say it.”
Maybe I wanted it to not be my fault.
“Say it, you fucker.”
Jindunamalar. Jindu the Blade. The man I’d loved, once. The man I’d fought with, bled with, killed with. The man who’d cut me deeper than I thought I could ever be cut and watched my magic bleed out. He wasn’t fighting me. His arms, and their blade, hung at his side. His face, weary and pale, could not even muster enough to look scared. Or angry. Or anything, really, except just…
Tired.
“What do you want me to say?” he half asked, half gasped.
“Say it wasn’t your fault,” I all but spat at him. “Say you never meant to. Say you wish you could take it all back.”
He stared at me. No pleas. No bargains. Just… those eyes. That exhaustion.
“Say it!”
“I can’t do that,” he said softly.
“Why not?” I wanted to know. I wanted to know why he couldn’t just say something so fucking terrible I could pull the trigger and be done with it, him and every last breath between us.
“Because it was my fault,” he said. “Because I meant to do it.” He swallowed hard. “And because it doesn’t matter what I wish.”
Now how in the hell did he manage to say the one thing that managed to piss me off worse?
And how in the hell was it still not enough to make me pull the trigger?
My mouth quavered. My eyes got hot. My blood boiled. The Cacophony burned in my hand, begging me to do it, to give myself the release.
“Then why the fuck are you here?”
But something else in me couldn’t do it. Not yet. Not like this.
Smashing him across the mouth with the gun’s hilt, though? Yeah, I could do that.
And I did.
“Why the fuck are you here? Why the fuck did you do that back there if not to deny? If not to grovel? If not to tell me how it wasn’t your fucking fault?”
And only then did his face change. Only then did the weariness, the exhaustion, give way to something else. Tears formed in his eyes. He shuddered, choked on them.
And I don’t think I’d noticed until then how much he’d changed.
He was thinner now. Or maybe just hollower. He was still lean and muscular, but he no longer brimmed with the effortless energy I had once seen. His hair was still long and dark, but streaked more with gray and messier, evidence of where he’d trimmed it with his own knife—and sloppily. He was still handsome—time and stress couldn’t take that from him, though from the hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, they sure fucking tried.
And the blade… his blade… the black blade that’d ruined everything.
It was gone.
The dirty weapon hanging from his dirty glove was barely fit to be called a weapon. In the hands of a Quickmage—let alone a Quickmage like Jindu the Blade—even a nail could be a weapon that kills hundreds.
That part hadn’t changed, either.
“I don’t know why,” he said. “I just… didn’t know what else to do.”
Despite myself, despite the Cacophony, despite everything boiling inside me—I could feel my grip on the trigger loosening, my arm on his throat slackening. Maybe I don’t know why I did that, either. Or maybe I knew all too well what it felt like to just act because you couldn’t think.
He took in a deep breath and spoke.
I didn’t stop him.
“After what happened with Vraki, after I listened to him, after I betrayed you for him, after you killed him…” He shook his head, shuddered. “I… stopped knowing. Stopped knowing what I was doing or what I was supposed to do. I just… stopped. And I couldn’t figure out how to keep going after what happened, what I’d done. I just…”
His legs trembled. He fell.
I didn’t stop that, either.
“I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to keep going without you, without Vraki, without anyone but this sword.” He wrapped his fingers tighter around the hilt, the way we all hug things that stay with us when everyone else doesn’t. “So I just… picked it up. And I started looking for you.”
“Why?” I growled. “How did you think this was going to go? Did you expect me to break down into tears and forgive you?”
He sniffed, looked up at me with a grin I remembered. A grin that haunted my dreams long after I’d put his name on my list.
“Actually, I expected you to kill me.”
I leveled the gun at him once more. “And if I did?”
He stared past the barrel, past the Cacophony’s brass, looked at me. Not the gun.
“Then I die.”
Have you ever had a moment? A breath? A single second where you can see everything going wrong right in front of you?
Yeah. Me too. A lot of them, honestly.
And I go over them a lot. I run them over and over in my head before I sleep and I fight them off when they come creeping back to me when I wake up. I wonder what I could have done differently, how I could have made it work. You do, too, probably.
And you also probably tell yourself, like I do, that each painful moment taught you something and that next time will be different.
What I’m asking is have you ever had a moment when you know you’re about to do something really fucking stupid and you don’t know why?
Yeah.
“And if I don’t?”
Me too.
He slumped there, on his knees, and stared up at me.
“Then I want to help.”
I held his gaze, and him, beneath the Cacophony. I watched the steam coiling off the gun’s barrel eagerly, the narrowing of eyes, his grinning dragon maw. He’d been waiting for this. We’d been waiting for this. This moment. A very long time.
He was really going to hate this.
But I bit back the outrage he sent searing into my hand as I eased the hammer forward, pulled my finger from the trigger. And as I slid him back into his sheath, I found the heat tolerable enough. He was right to be angry. I knew it.
But shit, sometimes I’m just real stupid, I guess.
“How long have you been following me?”
Not so stupid as to help him up, though. I spun, took my sword in hand, started walking. I’d already spent too much time here—Chiriel, Grishok, and Quoir wouldn’t be far behind. My ears were open, ready for the sound of feet behind me, of violins playing or whatever the fuck else they had.
What I expected to be able to do against them, I wasn’t sure. I knew how fucked I was. But I’d be fucked twice before I made it easier on them. And so I kept walking.
And Jindu kept following.
“Months? Longer?” he replied. “I picked up the trail at Lowstaff, then I lost you when you headed north.”
“You always were a shit tracker.”
“I agree, but I was still able to find you after the Valley.”
The Valley, I thought, and Darrish.
I swallowed back that pain. I had bigger agonies to worry about.
“Back with Velline,” I said, “the Quickmage I fought, that was you, wasn’t it?”
“Both times, yes. I tried not to intervene too often.”
“Why not?”
“Mostly because I worried you’d kill me.”
I grunted. “Reasonable.”
“You have a lot of people pissed off at you, I notice.”
“That’s an interesting thing to say for a man I just decided not to kill yet.”
We rounded out of the alleys and emerged on Toadback’s waterfront. The shops and cafés had been emptied. What few patrons remained were busy fleeing for the bridge. The Yuber River roared beside us, its dark waters crashing against the streets. Its rushing tide was a match for the crowd of refugees ahead swarming over the bridge. A thick knot of them choked the passage as they fought to escape the carnage wrecking the town.
“Well, I’m sorry, but it is kind of pertinent to the situation,” Jindu, who apparently had a hard time figuring out how not to get hit with things, continued. “I tried to warn you about Toadback. About Chiriel and the others. And when you went toward Torle, I thought you’d decided and I wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t what?” I interjected, annoyed. “Wouldn’t have to face me?”
He fell silent for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I was afraid of that. This. I still am. But I don’t think you can take on all of them.”
“I could with the right shells.”
“And the Revolution?”
“More shells.”
“And the Imperium?”
“All right, fucker, I get it,” I snapped. “I don’t need this shit, either. I’m not here to kill anyone that’s not in my way. I’m here to get someone across this bridge and then to figure out what to do from there.”
“Right.” He paused. “Someone. But doesn’t it seem—”
And without thinking, I whirled on him. I grabbed him by his collar before he could act, slammed him against a nearby wall. Blood boiled behind my eyes.
“Don’t,” I snarled. “You don’t get to talk about her like that. You don’t get to talk like that at all. Not around me. Whatever the fuck you think you know about me and this situation, you don’t. And if you want to help, you’ll fucking help and not ask questions. Understand?”
He nodded slowly. “Should I help you right now?”
I furrowed my brow, snorted. “Obviously.”
A faint whining caught my ear.
He inclined his head. “Okay, then.”
He vanished out of my hands. I felt movement behind my back. Steel clanged and sparks flashed at the corners of my eyes. I turned, saw a harpoon-sized bolt clatter to the streets. Jindu stood before me, blade drawn and seared from where he’d just deflected it.
And out on the river, more were coming.
Black boats whirred up the Yuber. Far across the water, I could see dark-clad silhouettes raising monstrously sized bolts into massive crossbows sporting imposing pulleys and motors. Dragonkiller bows. You didn’t typically see them outside of the Revolution, who crafted them.
But that’s the thing about thieves like the Ashmouths.
They steal.
“Fuck.”
I tore off running down the waterfront. Crossbows fired and the sky was filled with bolts. Jindu flashed at the edge of my vision, a shadow darting in and out. And wherever he appeared, sparks flew and another one of the massive missiles went flying harmlessly out of the way. Those that got by punched through storefronts and smashed through café tables, impaling themselves in the waterfront.
When I loved him, not a single one would have gotten past Jindu.
He was slowing down. Getting weaker.
I’d always thought that knowledge would make me happy.
“Fucking watch it, would you?” I shouted at him as I leapt over a bolt that went skidding across the stones.
“You’re the one with the gun,” he replied, between bouts of vanishing. “Shoot back.”
“They’re out of range, asshole! It’s not magic!”
“It quite visibly is magic.”
It was a good thing I had bigger problems because otherwise I would have shot him for that.
The chaos at the bridge loomed into view. From afar, it had looked like a disaster. Up close, it looked much worse.
The refugees had scattered in a halo, trying to pass through a skirmish that had broken out at the bridge’s mouth. Agne stood there, snarling as she tore a saw-bladed spear from a Revolutionary Twenty-Second and jammed it through his chest. Severium smoke stained her skin from where gunpikes had, and continued to, open fire on her, explosive charges skidding off her impervious skin. A small pile of Revolutionary corpses lay around her feet, the rest of them quite alive and fighting to break forward against the one-woman bulwark.
Well, four-woman, two-man bulwark, I guess.
Yria lurked behind Agne, her eyes bright with magic. She spun portals here and there, vanishing Revolutionaries one way, refugees another. Liette and Urda were busily scribbling on various piles of debris that had piled up, spellwrighting them to explode, to turn to tar, to do anything to slow down the Revolutionaries. Amid all the carnage, Meret and Sindra bellowed to get befuddled and terrified people across the bridge. The few peacekeepers that had remained had joined with them.
They were at their limit. That much was visible. But they’d managed to keep things under control. We could still escape.
“Come on,” I said as I pushed past the crowds and Liette and Urda’s barricades. “We have to go.”
“What?” Urda asked, glancing up from scrawling sigils. “We can’t go now!”
“These people need us, Sal!” Meret shouted.
“The moment we turn our back, these Revolution fucks will conscript them,” Sindra snarled, pushing a hesitant refugee through a portal. “We can’t leave them.”
“We have to,” I said. “Things are about to get a lot fucking worse.”
“Sal,” Liette said, “we can’t.”
“And I said we have to,” I roared. “There’s no time to explain—”
“WE CAN’T LEAVE BECAUSE THIS IS YOUR FUCKING FAULT!”
Sindra’s words cut through me like a blade. Her glare was alive with animal anger. Her sword was slick with blood. So were her hands.
“The Revolution is here because of you, the Ashmouths are here because of you, everyone is here because of you!” she screamed back. “We can’t keep fucking running away from your shit!”
I’d been hit a lot that day. Harder than I thought I could be hit and still stay standing, if I’m honest. And, if I’m continuing to be honest, when I looked into Sindra’s eyes and saw she meant every damn word that she jammed into my chest, I wanted to curl up and die. I wanted to just let it wash over me, drown me, quench the desires of everyone who had every reason to want to see me disappear.
Maybe the real reason I didn’t is one I’ll never know.
But at the time, I had one answer.
Spite’s a funny thing. It’s never spoken of highly—even the word is diminutive and flighty-sounding. But a lot of great things have been accomplished through spite. Empires have been destroyed and kings have been ruined by spite. People can call it petty and maybe that’s true for some.
But if you’re a special kind of person—a person with more anger than sense, a person who feels their teeth clench when someone tells them to have a good day and they don’t know why—then spite is something else.
It’s powerful. It’s endless. And it’s as easy as fucking breathing.
My mouth ran dry of curses, left only hot breath. My eyes twitched as I swept them around the bridge-turned-battlefield, taking everything in—the alleys, the rooftops, the dramatic angles. The Revolution swarmed forward, struggling to wear Agne down. The engines of the Ashmouth boats roared ever louder. The refugees flooded past me in fleeting shadows.
I took a deep breath. I fished three shells out of my satchel, ran my fingers across the sigils on their casings. I drew the Cacophony, felt his indignant heat course up my arm as I flipped his chamber open and started loading.
“Yria,” I said. “Stop the portals.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. But she kept quiet like I knew what I was doing. And when I pointed to the rooftops, her eyes followed.
“Keep your eyes on the roofs there and there,” I said. “When the kite vipers show up, take care of them.”
Urda protested. Liette shouted something. But Yria just grunted. The portals stopped. The refugees tore across the battlefield with their heads down, desperate to avoid severium charges caroming off Agne’s skin.
I ignored the screaming. I ignored the questions. I couldn’t afford to listen to them now. After all, they were counting on me. I kept my eyes open as I glanced across the carnage. I kept my ears open as—
There.
A note. A flash. A portal opened above me. Grishok’s massive shape came plummeting down.
“AGNE!”
I had the time to shriek a single word and pray that she knew what it meant. I aimed up, pulled the trigger twice. Grishok’s body trembled, shuddered as two Discordance shells slammed into his chest and erupted. The walls of sound smashed off each other, and everything else, rending the pavement apart and knocking refugees to their asses.
The Mendmage did little more than grunt his displeasure. But his great bulk flew backward, hurtling toward Agne. Her hands shot up, caught him by his throat and his antlers. With a snarl and a note of the Lady’s magic ringing in her ear, she whirled his body about like it was a toy and sent it flying into the Revolutionaries.
That was one good twist of fortune.
Another note played. I caught the flash of light. Chiriel and her armoire appeared on a distant rooftop. Her violin shrieked. The doors flew open. Her shimmering black pets came sweeping out in a screeching cloud.
A portal opened in front of them, swallowing them as they poured into it. I saw Yria’s portal open again, miles away, the confused kite vipers swarming in a befuddled cloud as they pulled out far from the violin that directed them.
There was another good one.
“Fucking well done!” I howled.
“Yeah.” Yria cackled—tried to cackle. Her voice faltered. Her throat tightened. “Yeah, it’s… I… I can’t…”
She teetered forward. Her legs all but snapped out from under her. Urda screamed, abandoning his tools as he rushed forward to catch her. He struggled to hold her weight, looked up at me with tears pouring out of his eyes.
“SHE’S DONE TOO MUCH!” he screamed. “YOU FUCKING MONSTER, CAN’T YOU SEE SHE’S DONE TOO MUCH?”
Another pain. More words to haunt me later. And later is when I’d deal with them.
“We’re clear now!” Sindra shouted to be heard above the fracas. “Come on! NOW, NOW!”
The remaining refugees—mercifully, few—came surging forward to join the others as they rushed across the bridge. Urda helped his sister, Meret joining him in supporting her as they took off with the rest of them.
“Big lady!” Sindra snapped. “We’re moving!”
Agne glanced over her shoulder. Not with contempt. Nor even with anger. I could have handled those. But the unbothered, casual displeasure with which she regarded us, narrowing her eyes as if considering whether it would simply be easier to kill us and everyone else.
In the end, she shrugged and started off after the others at a pace that was far too unhurried to be healthy.
“Nice work, shitface.” Sindra seemed less bothered than I did, slapping me on the back like she hadn’t just cut me to my core a moment ago. “Let’s get the fuck out of here while we can.”
The kite vipers wouldn’t be away forever and Grishok would eventually get free. She was right. We took off running, bringing up the rear of the refugees. As we rushed across the bridge, I saw the white froth as the Ashmouth boats came roaring up to us. I heard the crossbows click.
I grabbed Sindra, pulled her back as a harpoon-sized bolt blew in front of us. I aimed the Cacophony as much as I dared, squeezed the trigger. Hoarfrost struck the water and erupted. Ice froze across the river, sweeping forward like frigid serpents as they rushed toward the boats. Ashmouths went screaming, launched overboard as great icicles punched skyward and splintered their boats into shards.
A shadow flitted in front of me. Jindu reappeared briefly, perched upon the bridge’s railing, and raised an eyebrow.
“Out of range?” he asked.
Then vanished again.
“They were closer that time!” I spat to the empty air as I took off running in pursuit of the others, Sindra at my side. “Sorry. Old relationship.”
“Oh, good. I saw him flying around and figured since he wasn’t trying to kill any of us, he must belong to you.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They aren’t following.” She chuckled, slapped at her prosthetic leg. “Good for fucking me, huh?”
“Yeah.” I looked ahead, to the shrinking shapes of the refugees. “How many?”
“Huh?”
“How many do you think we saved?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“How the fuck can I not?” I snapped at her. “This is my fault. You said so yourself.”
“I did, it is, and you did the best you could cleaning up your mess.” She glared at me sidelong. “And frankly, I’ve known you long enough to know a lot of the stories about you are birdshit. We were never going to help everyone. And if you worry about it, you’ll drive yourself mad. It’s just not possible. Not for me. Not for you. Not even for both us, the big lady, and the two shits.”
“But Meret—”
“Meret has his mind on the people who still need him. Maybe if you could do a little more of that, you could— LOOK OUT!”
Just.
Give me a minute.
What happened next was… I still have trouble thinking about it. It’s one of those moments I think I’ll never really be able to look at. Or one I’ll never be able to stop looking at.
I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was too worried about the Vagrants. Or the Revolutionaries. Or the refugees. Or whether all the shit they’d said—about me, about Darrish, about all of it—was true.
I don’t know. I don’t think it does any good to wonder.
But I was distracted. I wasn’t thinking. My ears weren’t open. Neither were my eyes. I didn’t see the air shimmering. I didn’t see the light stirring in front of me.
But Sindra did.
And I only heard the Lady’s song by the time she had already shoved me out of the way.
Quoir.
I had forgotten about Quoir.
He came leaping out of the portal, his smile alive with joy. He tackled Sindra head on, wrapped his arms around her, laughed. She snarled, shoved him off. He went caroming into me. I smashed the hilt of the Cacophony against his face. He screamed, staggered away.
Ten seconds. More or less.
That’s as long as Quoir needed.
He swayed, looked up at me, his smile white and red, blood trailing from the wound I’d just given him. And yet he smiled. He smiled at me like I had just walked into the punch line of the best joke in the world without realizing it.
His smile grew broader. His eyes sparkled. He held up his hand. Something dark and fleshy, glistening with blood, sat plain in his palm. An organ. I couldn’t recognize it. But I knew who it came from.
“Oops.” He tossed it into the river. “Missed.”
He laughed, tumbled over the edge. I moved to chase him.
“Sal?”
Sindra stumbled forward. She clutched at her belly. Her skin grew incredibly pale with every breath she took. She stared at me, fear and pain in her eyes.
“I don’t… feel…”
Blood trickled out of her mouth. Then burst. Bile and fluid splashed onto the ground. She collapsed to her knees, looked at me through a face pale with terror and illness. I ran toward her. I grabbed her as she fell. I pulled her close to me.
I don’t know why.
I already knew it was too late.
No one had ever used magic like Quoir had. No one ever thought you could target an individual organ and teleport it out of a person’s body. It had made him feared among his enemies and his allies, revered by his Empress. It was a precise art. Left no room for error. He had to be close to pull it off.
He had to touch you.
I learned later it was part of her lungs that Quoir had taken out of her. Not the whole thing. Just enough to make it messy. Her entire body had broken down within seconds. She’d choked on what remained of it. It was a horrific way to die.
And I couldn’t save her from it.
When the air shimmered next to me again, I saw it. When Quoir’s hand came reaching out for me, I saw that, too. I just held Sindra there. And I closed my eyes. And I waited for it to happen.
“Stop it.”
But it didn’t.
“Let go!”
Quoir didn’t touch me.
“LET ME GO!”
He screamed.
I opened my eyes. I saw Quoir, not far away, his arm caught in his own portal, desperately trying to pull it back out. Beside me, that arm extended from another portal. It held there, rigid and trembling in the air, as if against his own will.
A note rang out.
Not the Lady’s.
Not anything I’d recognized. This one was deeper. More rolling. Like an old, ancient bell.
I followed the sound to its source. And she stood twenty feet away.
Liette’s hand was extended. Her fingers were outstretched. Her eyes were dark and alive with stars.
She clenched her fist. There was a loud snapping sound. Quoir’s deadly limb contorted into unnatural shapes. On the other side of the portal, he screamed.
“STOP! STOP IT! STOP!”
It did not stop. Liette took a step closer. The skin of Quoir’s arm rippled. A step closer. It began to unravel, like cloth. A step closer. It got worse—the flesh peeled back, desiccated, and became Dust. The sinew of his arm was untangled, strand by strand. The veins were dissected, string by string. The shattered bones grew visible beneath it.
She was taking him apart. Layer by layer.
“LET ME GO! LET ME GO! GET OFF!”
Quoir felt it. All of it. His screams tore my ears apart, as surely as Liette tore him apart. He struggled to get free, but she wouldn’t let him. He thrashed, trapped there as the unraveling continued down his arm, past his elbow.
I heard a note. There was a scream. A splatter. The half-unraveled arm flopped to the ground, severed and twitching like a fish half-skinned.
He’d closed the portal. Severed his own arm to escape.
I stared at it. But I could barely see it. I could barely think or remember where I was or remember anything, for that matter, but the cold body in my hands. I looked down at Sindra, at the horror seared across her face, at the words that she couldn’t say trapped behind her eyes.
I didn’t weep.
Not then.
Not until the sounds of everything—all songs, all fears, all pains—went soft. And I felt Liette settle down beside me. And I felt her wrap her arms around me and pull me close to her.
And I cried.
And I let her hold me.
Until I could remember how to walk again.