14

FOURTEEN: Taking Flight

I am not a light sleeper. What’s more, I snore, a source of personal embarrassment I have never managed to live down, not ever since Pyotr told me about it. But when the tumblers to the door of the little cell began to click and turn, I was instantly awake. Spinning, half-falling out of the bed, I knocked the extinguished lantern to the floor with a crash of broken glass while grabbing my pistol, taking aim as the door swung open.

The light outside threw odd shadows but I could see Jaska’s man, Leivick—or the other one, Samuil, maybe—standing in the doorway. Behind him, I saw Kale, his eyes going wide as he saw where I was aiming. “Saints, put that thing down!” he hissed.

I was breathing fast, nostrils flared, nervous as a cornered house cat in a barn full of rats. Swallowing, I put the gun down as I stumbled to my bare feet. The stone floor was cold, so cold I gasped in surprise. “Sorry,” I said, falling onto the bed. My heart was pounding in my chest—if I’d been dreaming or in the Veil, I couldn’t remember any of it.

“Don your footwear—quickly, please,” the manservant said.

I reached for my boots. At that moment, my brain decided to fixate on the fact that I’d been wearing men’s clothing—the same outfit, no less—for nearly a week. Back on the farmstead, at least I’d had several long skirts to rotate through on a regular basis. It was almost enough to make me miss my wedding dress. “What’s going on?”

“We need to go,” Kale said, a tone of warning in his words. “It looks like the Avardi are ready to storm the house.” As though echoing his words—or maybe summoned by them—I heard a door bang open, and the sound of numerous footsteps on the stone stair.

Kale and I shared a look. Neither of us said anything; we didn’t have to.

“Do we go back through the sewers?” I asked.

Kale shook his head. “Can’t—that’s probably the first place they’ll be watching.”

Leivick didn’t hesitate. “This way, please.” He turned and walked quickly and quietly down the narrow hallway, but it was a different direction from where we’d entered hours earlier. With nothing to carry but my belt and my weapons, I followed behind, and heard Kale coming after me. I heard a metal scrape; looking back, I saw him fighting with the long saber at his waist.

“Sorry!” he said.

“Speak softly, if you must speak at all,” the manservant chided before continuing.

The old masonry all around and above us looked old and decrepit in the soft golden light, turning the earth-colored bricks black; I rubbed my hand against one as I walked and a crabapple-sized piece broke off in my fingers. It was hard to breathe, to focus on just moving forward and not on how oppressive the air was as it closed around me. Cobwebs hung over our heads, some so thick in places that it looked like a living fog was ready to fall and consume us whole. In the distance behind us, I heard the muffled sound of voices shouting, their words too indistinct to make out, but I could guess that they were angry.

As portents went, it seemed like a bad one.

I grit my teeth and trudged on, wondering just where I was going and—for a panicked second—if I’d ever see the sun again. In that momentary black pit of despair, I heard a familiar voice: Swordbearer.

I stumbled and fell, only catching myself on the narrow walls at the last second.

“You alright?” Kale asked, his voice hushed. Ahead of me, I saw Leivick stop, turning to look back at us over his shoulder.

“F-fine,” I lied, straightening and brushing my trousers clean of old dust. “Can’t talk,” I added, as much for him as for the Sword, and hoped that Deathbringer would understand.

Time runs short, the Spellsword said to me. Once the sun rises and sets, the full moon will be ascendant. You must reach the White Fortress before then.

Up ahead, the corridor took a sharp turn and Leivick disappeared out of sight. I followed and emerged into a dome-covered chamber. A pool of black, brackish water stood in the center of the room; the tile walls were filthy and covered with dirt and dried muck of some origin, but I could smell fresh air, so I drank it in. Just what the room was originally intended for, I couldn’t begin to guess at. Overhead, I saw a wide hole cut out of the stone and thought I spotted a wisp of cloud floating by, but it was there and gone again in a moment. It was still dark; the moon must’ve been hiding behind a cloud bank.

“Can’t talk,” I repeated, breathing the words so soft that I barely heard them.

Deathbringer continued, either not hearing me or not caring. Yenda’s mother, the Avardi Matriarch, does not approve of her daughter’s plan to take me by force—she ordered the First Daughter to take me out of the Fortress, but here I remain. You may find the Matriarch more amenable to your plight, but take care not to trust her: she is convinced that my power is corrupting her firstborn. I do not think she will be a willing ally to your cause.

Be quick but cautious, Inga Alenir—time is not on your side. Just as soon as he’d come, Deathbringer’s presence was gone again.

Kale emerged from the narrow corridor, which now I could see was so narrow he barely fit into it at all. “Where are we?” he said.

“One of the old house cisterns,” Leivick answered. “From before the city sewers and water service lines were built. Unused now, but not without certain other uses.” At the far end of the room, he pulled at something I couldn’t see, some lever or mechanism. A rope ladder unfurled from the hole overhead, tumbling down end-over-end before it was left dangling near the edge of the black pool.

“Brilliant.” Kale hurried over and grabbed the end of the ladder, then motioned to me. “Let’s go, Inga. You first.”

I had a second to consider it, then nodded. Before that, I took the manservant by one arm, giving it a firm squeeze. “Thank you,” I told him, looking him in the eyes. “And to your Mistress, as well.”

Leivick gave a small, kind-looking smile. “Return safely, if you can.” With that, he took another exit, a matching narrow corridor on the far side of the room, and was gone.

The rope ladder was a flimsy, precarious thing, but the strands were strong and the rope was fresh, so I didn’t worry about it breaking under my weight. In less than a minute I was at the top, and I carefully raised my head to take a look around.

It was indeed night—or, more likely, early morning. The near-full moon had slipped free of the clouds and was shining in the sky, foretelling my coming doom. Those clouds had thinned and the air was chilly, enough so that my cheeks were flushed from a sudden breeze that blew over me. I could see a grand house in the distance, less than a stone’s throw away, which I presumed to belong to Kale’s sister and her husband. The collapsed stones of an old well opening provided me with some limited cover, along with the foliage of a nearby tree the shaded me from most of the moonlight. Beyond it, I saw only thick grass and a sloped hill leading down towards the star-studded horizon.

I could smell salt in the air again, and spotted a portion of the city harbor beyond the hill’s edge, the surf moving and shining in the dark. In the distance, the luminescent shape of the White Fortress sat, waiting for me. Seeing it so close but still so far away was enough to make me want to scream. It was a pretty view, but diminished by the sight of so many men in blue and silver coats in the lights of the nearby manor house. I spotted them inside the house through the windows, circling around the outside of the house, even standing in the yard not far from where I was hiding. Some of them were carrying bright-steel lamps, scanning the grounds and peering into the thick grasses, trying to spot anyone hiding in the dark.

I froze. Standing before one window, framed by the glare of the interior lights, was Yenda Avard herself. The black-haired bitch was staring out into the darkness, gloved hands clasped together; behind her, I could see Jaska, clad in a scarlet housecoat, standing next to a man with silver hair seated in a wheeled chair—I recognized him from the painting as Damian Kalinin. It was too far to make out much more in detail, but I was sure they were discussing something. Yenda looked tense and alert. I wondered if she could see me.

Kale seemed to sense my hesitation. “Is it safe?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

I shook my head and repressed a laugh of frustration. “Hundred winters, Kale, of course it isn’t safe. Just get up here.” As quickly as I dared, I crawled out from the hole onto my belly, keeping to the shadows of the stones and the nearby shade tree with its spindly branches and silvery leaves. As I listened to Kale’s grunting and the ropes creaking as he climbed, I heard the black waters of the harbor heave and sigh and watched the men who’d come to kill me—at the rate my luck was turning, if they didn’t catch me, the coming full moon was going to do the job for them.

“Stop,” I told him, just before he emerged.

“What is it?”

“Get rid of that coat first.”

“What? Why?”

“Because the moon is almost full, you idiot—a silver coat like yours will glow like a torch in this light.”

There was a pause. “Good point.” I heard him grunting, heard the rope creaking under his weight, and then his head finally poked up out of the darkness. He squinted at the house and the invading force, muttering something to himself. “That’s way too many to shoot your way through,” he said.

“No kidding.” I shimmied on my belly to one side to make room, and he joined me in the dirt a moment later in his dark trousers and stained shirt. “How many of them are there?”

He did some quick, soft counting under his breath. “Looks like more than two dozen. That’s…two or three patrols-worth, easy. I don’t know how we get out of this one, Inga.”

“Maybe I should just solve all our problems right now,” I said, pulling out my Balalaika and pointing it towards the window where Yenda was standing.

“No!” He hissed the word before grabbing my hand to push the gun down, scowling at me. “For one, you’ll alert all of them to our position; and two, are you completely insane? You might hit Jaska or Damian.”

I yanked my wrist free of his grip, but didn’t fire. “What if she was the one who called Yenda in the first place? What happened to not wanting to go back to her? You get tired of running, ‘rich boy?’”

The redhead snorted and shook his head. “It’s too risky. Besides, what’s that going to do besides getting us both caught?”

“You got any better ideas?”

Kale craned his head, looking in several directions. “We can’t go back down; there’s probably more soldiers in the cellars right now. The grounds run right to the cliff’s edge, and then it’s a thirty-meter drop into the harbor.” He gestured off to my right, towards the slope leading towards the water. “If we can reach the rocks, we can skirt the edge of the cliffs until we get close to where the nearest retaining walls are built, and slip back into the—”

“Hey!” The sound of a man’s voice made my dead heart want to jump in my chest. The glare of an ensorcelled lantern shone across our faces, and I spotted two shadows in the dark, looming over us—they’d come across our hiding place without us even noticing.

Quick as thinking, I raised the gun in my hand. Pyotr’s training was ingrained in me: fix my aim, set my stance, lean forward, squeeze the trigger. I was firing prone, so I barely had to move at all. There was a bright flash in the dark and I heard one of the shadows cry out; I squeezed off two shots, one right after the other, but the Avardi were so close a blind man could’ve hit both marks.

“Let’s go!” Kale was already on his feet and he grabbed the scruff of my coat, pulling me to my feet as we ran away from the house, towards the cliff’s edge in the distance.

“Go where?”

“Jump into the Grey Harbor, swim for the docks, look for a place to hide!”

“I thought you said that was thirty meters down!” I shouted at his back.

“Have you got any better ideas?!” he shouted back.

The sound of gunfire shut me up before I had a chance to answer. I ducked my head, covering it in one hand. I aimed backwards and squeezed off more blind shots—it might’ve hit one of the moons for all I knew. When I ran out of bullets, I threw the useless weapon away and kept running. More shots zipped over my head, slicing through the cold air.

Kale reached the cliff first, but I was right behind him. As I jumped off the edge it felt like I could see the whole world at my feet: the waves, pouring over themselves like molten silver, flashing and dancing in the moonlight; the shining lights of Whitehold below, a thousand pinpoints of street lights and lanterns, while long docks jutted out into the water like black fingers; the White Fortress, glittering like a fallen moon on the water in the distance. I also saw lights shining and reflecting in the chaotic waves below, as though twinkling back at the stars in the night sky.

I fell.

And fell.

And fell.

I heard Kale shouting, saw him turning and waving his arms as he plummeted below me. The wind screamed in my ears. The water reached up for me, black hands ready to crush me into pieces.

I was going to die.

“Pyotr.” I whispered my love’s name, certain that I would be joining him wherever the dead go that we can never follow in life.

I reached the water and fell right through it. It felt cold as death. I’d died once before, and now that sensation of icy nausea came back to me as the water closed over my head. I opened my mouth and tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound. My arms and legs pumped and churned in the salty deep, cutting and clawing at it. It was so dark that I wasn’t sure I was even swimming towards the surface—I didn’t know which way up even was.

Deathbringer! I shouted the name in my mind, having no one else to call then. Pyotr was dead; Kale was probably dead as well—no one could survive this half-frozen hell-scape, this black vacuum that was trying to swallow me whole without a trace. My journey of vengeance had come to an ignoble end.

Golden light burst before my eyes.

Then I breached the surface, gasping, crying out. Whether my heart was still beating or not, I needed air and gulped it in, however frigid it might’ve been, burning my lungs within me. At least I knew how to swim, and managed to tread water while wiping my eyes clear, trying to focus on the golden light around me. For a moment I couldn’t even process what I was seeing, but then it all snapped into focus: the lights on the water weren’t reflections of the stars.

There were boats in the water. I was surrounded by a dozen or more small water craft, all of them coming towards me, their lights shining in the dark, red-steel engines billowing super-heated steam into the cold air. An artificial light fell over me, blinding me; I heard the sound of a man’s voice calling above the crashing waves. I raised a shaking hand to shield myself from the glare and a dozen more focused on me, making it impossible to see much of anything.

“Inga!”

“Kale!” I recognized his voice, fixing on it. I turned my head and tried to locate him, blinking through the painful spots in my vision, all while forcing my numbed legs to keep kicking in the water, trying to keep my head above the surface.

“Inga!” I heard Kale shout again and spotted him in one of the boats. He was soaked, one side of his face streaked with blood, but he was alive. Kale was on his knees, swarmed by three or four silver-coated soldiers with guns drawn. “Watch out!”

One of the boats swooped in close to me, so close that the water in its wake rushed over my head. My legs refused to obey me any longer and I started to sink—I was ready for the death that awaited me, certain that it had finally come. I waited for the golden light to swallow me up and wondered if I really would see Pyotr again.

Then I felt myself being pulled upwards, my limp body being hoisted up out of the dark water. My back crashed against the side of the boat and I screamed; however numbed my body might’ve been, it wasn’t so senseless that I couldn’t feel pain. I was physically lifted by multiple hands and dragged over the side of the small craft, graceless as a fish on the end of a hook. I didn’t even have the strength to fight and could only shiver with such violent abandon that it was any wonder I didn’t bite off my own tongue.

Out of the corner of one eye, framed in the moonlight, I saw a large man looming over me. The moonlight shone off his pale face, and his red beard and cheeks glistened from the spray and the cold night air, hairs looking like they were standing on-end. One side of his face was mottled with an ugly red-and-purple bruise, forcing him to squint down at me through his good eye.

“Ruslan! Don’t! Don’t you touch her!” Kale was fighting, even at that moment. I couldn’t see him, but I heard others shouting, heard him swearing and carrying on like a mad thing. “Get off of me!” he shouted, but it didn’t seem like he was having much success in freeing himself.

For a single moment, Ruslan Avard and I met each other’s gaze. To me, he looked enormous, larger than any man I’d ever seen. I felt afraid, but even more so, I felt resignation. I’d expected to die once or twice already—sooner or later, I was bound to run out of second chances.

“My apologies,” he said, which was definitely the last thing I ever expected him to say to me. Then he swung back with one booted foot before kicking me full in the face.

Pain like I’ve never felt exploded inside my skull. I couldn’t even cry out, it was so great. My vision went red and black; I was aware of my body, but I also felt removed from it, like I’d become another person, detached from any of the goings-on. I was aware of Kale shouting again, but I couldn’t understand the words. The roar of the sea was deafening. My body refused to move, to obey any order I gave it.

I heard a metallic click, the sound of a revolver’s hammer being pulled back, felt the telltale weight of the barrel against my temple.

“Inga! No—!”

BOOM.

YENDA

Yenda Avard the Younger checked her pocket watch. It was far too late to be out and about, and yet here she was, on the hunt again. The fact that her quarry had eluded her for so long left her feeling…unsettled. “You could have at least sent word when your brother returned to the city, Jaska, dear.” She said it with what felt like just the right amounts of concern and dismay—she intended to sound worried, not accusatory. Not yet, anyway.

Jaska was standing by her husband’s wheelchair, hands tucked together. Her housecoat was tied tight; her auburn hair was undone just enough that she might’ve been roused from a deep sleep as she claimed. “I’m sure I would have, Yenda darling, but I hardly had time myself to see him and say hello before your militia came banging on my door.” It was a neutral sort of answer, neither a denial nor an accordance with Yenda’s claim. How very like Jaska. “Haven’t your men found him yet?”

“Obviously not.” Yenda managed to answer without growling through her clenched teeth, but that was a challenge. Jaska Isrodel was proving to be less reliable and even less predictable than Yenda had foreseen. Once her marriage to Kale was complete, she was going to have to accelerate her plans for her sister-in-law—and her Spellsword. “As for the girl Kale brought with him.”

“What of her?”

“Were you aware that you were harboring a fugitive?” Yenda watched the other woman’s reflection in the window, to see how she’d respond.

“A fugitive? That girl?” Jaska sounded surprised. “I wasn’t aware she’d broken any crime, if that’s what you mean. She certainly didn’t strike me as the criminal type.”

Yenda pressed her lips tight together, turning away from the window; watching the men fumble about in the dark had grown less and less entertaining as the moments passed. “Who is she? What does she want? Why did she bring him all this way?” When Jaska didn’t immediately respond, Yenda added: “Don’t you want to know?”

Jaska shook her head. “I wasn’t concerned about such things. I discerned she wasn’t a threat, first-off—that was my greatest concern. She appears to just be a farm girl, hardly the sort of person to be concerned about. Then Kale admitted that he was the one who’d insisted on coming here. She appears to be following him, not the other way around.” She squeezed her husband’s hand when he reached up over one shoulder towards her. It might’ve been a tender thing, if it was at all believable: Jaska Isrodel married a man almost three times her senior because of his wealth and position, not out of any sense of affection. Yenda was certain of that. The man hadn’t even taken his wife’s last name—the truth was obvious, if one simply knew where to look.

Their conversation was cut short by a pair of pistol shots. Yenda hurried for the double doors leading to the rear veranda, ignoring how Jaska called her name. Squinting into the night, she spotted a dark figure running across the grass—Yenda would’ve recognized Kale’s ponderous gait anywhere. He’d also lost his coat somewhere. Behind him was a smaller shape, little more than a shadow in the dark, but Yenda’s heart seized up when she saw it: that had to be the Alenir girl!

“Get them!” she shouted. When several of the Avardi soldiers started shooting, Yenda’s temper snapped. “Stop shooting, you frost-brained inbreds! I’ll flay the lot of you alive if you hit either of them!”

“Yenda, wait!” Jaska called. Instead, Yenda took the stairs two at a time until she reached the ground, and then ran as fast as she could after her soldiers and the quarry ahead of them. Jaska Isrodel was an annoyance, one that Yenda intended to exorcise herself of soon. But that had to wait until after the wedding.

It was a short run to the bluff. Yenda watched as Kale, and then Inga Alenir, leapt off the edge. She shoved her way through the small gathering near the edge and looked down, watching as both of them landed in the harbor with a pair of splashes.

One of the men snickered. “Idiots. If it wasn’t for the Commander, they’d be frozen fish food.”

Yenda grabbed the man by his coat, turning him around, before slamming the back of her fist against his cheek. “Silence!” she snarled. The soldier backed away several steps, gloved hand pressed to his face with shock and fear in his eyes. The other soldiers gave him a wide berth, not wanting to be seen as taking his side over hers.

He was right, of course: Ruslan and his men were closing in on the swimmers, and soon had Kale in one of the boats. Yenda hadn’t struck the soldier because he was wrong, she did it because it was necessary. Being unpredictable made the militia fear her, and fear drove obedience. Yenda wanted compliance above everything else; loyalty was inconsequential by comparison.

Besides, after the week she’d had, Yenda needed to hit something. It improved her mood immensely.

They all watched as Ruslan fished out the Alenir girl, at how she lay subdued and beaten at his feet. What Yenda didn’t expect was for her brother to pause for a moment, turning his eyes up to the top of the cliff. In spite of the distance, Yenda could tell he was looking right at her. Then he drew his firearm, aimed at the girl’s head, and pulled the trigger. She saw the muzzle flash, then heard the gun fire an instant later.

For a long moment, Yenda stared down at the boat containing the body of her adversary—she’d barely known the woman, had spoken to her for only a few moments, but now she was finally rid of her. Yenda permitted herself a long, cleansing breath of the cool night air, and put any lingering thoughts of Inga Alenir out of her mind.

“We’re convening back at the Fortress,” she said, turning her back to the cliff and the men gathered there. “Move out.”