1.

 

He was not dead, but neither was he alive, not as he knew it.

Zaifyr’s body lay on the floor beneath him, familiar yet not. He could feel a chill in his spine, but it was dull, the pain hidden behind another’s. That pain, in contrast, was a full-body chill, of empty veins and lungs, of cold, cold emptiness sharply accentuated around the shoulder and the eye, the echo of brittle bones frozen deeply within him. Within her.

He felt the woman who had died in front of him as clearly as he did himself, the second presence surrounding him as he gazed not just at his prone form, but at hers as well.

She was dead.

Just as he promised, she was dead.

Zaifyr’s will leashed her panic, stopping her thoughts before they overwhelmed him. It was the same expression of power he had used to flesh out the haunts in his hotel room. But the result was different. Her awareness formed an undefined tether, threatening to bond her to his being and trap him in her. A witch and the dead felt the same, a warlock and his blood rites, the bonding of the living to the dead. If she were dead, then he was alive: and he applied pressure over her being, bent her will until he felt calm, controlled, and could look about the room.

All were dead.

The haunts of mercenaries and healers lingered over the prone, empty forms of their bodies, lying in beds and on the ground, while half a dozen had fallen at the door of the ward.

It was clear to Zaifyr that he had lost time after he had fallen, that the separation of his spirit from his body had not taken place quickly. He was not yet sure how it had happened; it was a new experience for him, one he did not feel comfortable with. It did not feel right. The world had a faint gray taint to it, as if it were slowly being petrified. Is this what the gods felt as they died? The slow, torturous death? Did that mean he was dying, that their power over him had rendered him a death centuries in length?

Forcing the haunt of the assassin to move out of the ward he entered the hallway, and found more bodies there.

None had made it out of the hospital, thankfully. Instead, a bar lay on the floor, the last of the mercenaries to reach it attempting to barricade the door, to stop anyone from entering.

The door opened.

He said—

Fo.

He said, “Saet, did you not think I would notice you in Mireea? You have done too much for me to walk down a street unnoticed. No, don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your defense. You are a paid assassin. You need no excuse. But did you truly think I would not smell my own poison on Illaan Alahn’s birds? And then, later, on him? That old healer here knows. When I went into her hospital to look at the sergeant, I thought she would attack me, that she would order the soldiers in their beds to pick up their weapons. It wasn’t until I stood beside him that I could understand her fury. Then to have the evidence presented to me by another shortly after by the Madman himself!”

The door closed behind the Keeper. Slowly, he made his way down the hall, pausing at each body, turning each over, running his scarred hands over each, before rising and continuing.

“The Enclave sent us here to learn about the Leerans, that is all.” Fo’s hand fell heavily onto her shoulder, his fingers digging painfully into her skin. “But who, I imagine, will believe that back home? I think that is what offends me the most, right now, that I will be blamed for assassination plans I consider beneath me. After all, if I had wanted Illaan Alahn dead, I would not have given a poison that lingers. Nor would I have ordered assassination attempts on the Captain and Lady of the Spine, much less the Madman. I can only imagine that the money that was offered to you by the Benan Le’ta to enrage his rival and frame me was of such an amount that your common sense was abandoned.”

It was clear that Fo could not sense Zaifyr or any of the dead. If so, he would have noticed how the latter lingered around him, their chilled presence drawn by his power and the heat of him.

“Do you feel the cold in your shoulder?” She nodded beneath his scarred gaze, unable to do anything but. “Good. I have a simple task for you, Saet, one that will serve to remind the Traders Union of what will await them when I return to Yeflam.”

“I will—”

“You will die.” Beneath Fo’s fingers, Zaifyr could feel the bones of her shoulder fracture. “The plague you unleash here will leave nothing but the gods’ chosen to return to Yeflam, a plague that will ravage the men and women who believe that I could be framed so easily.”

He approached Zaifyr’s fallen body, the expressionless calm of his face breaking, a slight smile emerging across his pale features. “Now, this is a gift, Madman. Are you dead?” The Keeper’s fingers pressed down on his neck, feeling the pulse. “Not quite, but it is a shallow coil that ties you to this world and it will break soon enough.”

Zaifyr could not return to his body.

He searched deep within himself, pulled his awareness from the assassin’s haunt, separated all parts of his being forcibly, harshly, the actions disorientating, damaging to his awareness—

—and which resulted in his awareness in another.

A man, a young man, a mercenary. A chill seeped into his arm, where it had been broken and rebroken, before being set.

“Your eyes are open, but you do not see. How apt.” Fo rose. “Can you hear me, Madman? I have often wondered if the gods could understand us as they die. If they could hear our words and rage at what we said. Now, I ask, do you? I did not plan this, but I will not walk from it, either. The sounds of Asila have never left me. If, when I return home, Aelyn seeks to punish me for what has happened here, then so be it. I will gladly own the price for your death.”